Too many conflicting posts in this forum!

[idata]

I've read a whole bunch of posts about IDE, AHCI, Toolbox and trim. What a mess. I can't find head from tail.So many contradictory posts. Are some people giving opinions based on posts they've read.. which might be false to being with!?

Is their some official support forum from Intel where Intel support employees can give authoratative answers or because this is a community forum anything goes? I really don't want to bother with I-am-Not-sure answers. I need definite yes or no.

I would like to see an official FAQ from intel answering the common questions. Such as.. does Trim work on IDE port or not (regardles if I should be using AHCI)

I have seen two visible camps around this question.

[idata]

I was able to uninstall AMD's driver. Here's are my AS SSD benchmarks, with and without AMD's driver. I ran the optimizer when running msahci. Looks like AMD's driver has better performance. Are my stats with msahci comparable with what is expected?

Stats with AMDSATA

Stats with MSAHCI

[idata]

abdu,

Here are my AS SSD with MSAHCI and then when I installed the RST drivers, mine are a little higher.

That is a good question, are these comparable to what everyone else is getting?

[idata]

Synthetic benchmarks scores will vary depending on the condition of the drive and any background services that might be running when you run the test.

I normally come in around 420 with RST drivers but all the results posted above are OK. You are unlikely to see a visible difference between 360 & 420.

This run was my best on a freshly formatted drive on an Intel ICH9 chipset. I haven't been able to reproduce it since so it was a bit of a fluke.

EDIT: And my drive is a 160GB version so the sequential write speed specs are faster than the 80GB drives.

[idata]

Hi Folks, The advice given by redux is all correct IMO, thanks to him (or her?) Yes it is frustrating attempting to depend on random forum posts for definitive information, that is simply the nature of forums.

It's odd to me Intel does not have one well-labeled link on their SSD info page that summarizes all the basic need-to-know information regarding their SSDs. It's really not that much information and not confusing if written well. I use the RST/iaStor driver on several Intel chipsets (P43, G45, X58, with the ICH10 or ICH10R) with my SSDs and it works great. I would not necessarily expect the Intel driver to work on AMD or NVIDIA chipsets or vice versa, given they likely have differences in architecture, not to mention the CPU differences. That they seem to work (in some cases) surprises me, but hey, great! Yes, the lack of Trim in RAID is a shame, but I imagine there is a major reason for that, hopefully that will be fixed soon, if possible.

What I like to do with the Intel SSD Toolbox (on one Vista 32 and two Win 7 64 PCs) is first run a Windows disk cleanup and delete uneeded files, remove old restore points via the option in disk cleanup, and then run the SSD Optimizer, the notion being to refresh all the recently deleted space on the SSD. Might be unnecessary given Trim, but I have seen no problems, and my three 80GB Intel G2's bench in the 390's - 410's on AS SSD. When and how Trim runs automatically is a mystery to me and I've never seen any explanation of that anywhere.

Besides using the standard OS settings that SSDs should have, I have decided not to "baby" my SSDs (except for archiving files) and use them as I would any HDD. So far I have had zero problems with the three Intel SSDs I own, I am very satisfied with them. Yes, other manufactures SSDs may have better write speeds in benchmark testing, but none of them that I am aware of provide a utility like SSD Toolbox, and in my usage I have never found the Intel SSDs wanting in any area.

One thing that confuses me is the different model variations in Intel's line. For example, I have two G2GNs and one G2GC, all X25-M 80GB. I have seen on retailers websites X25-M 80GB models called G2R5, or even G2XX. Are these simply cosmetic and/or differences in accessories, etc? I can never find anything on Intel's website regarding this.

[idata]

^ Intel's site is not the easiest to navigate but usually the info is lurking somewhere:

Here is a summary of the products, capacities and form factors with the respective product codes:

http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-029624.htm http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd/sb/CS-029624.htm

This helps differentiate between OEM & Retail (AKA pretty boxes).

6These SSDs are for internal use inside a PC system or other drive enclosure.

79.5mm thickness includes plastic spacer to fit snugly in most 2.5" notebook drive bays.

8Pretty box includes Desktop installation kit that contains: 3.5" desktop drive bay adapter to 2.5" SSD adapter bracket, screws, Desktop SATA (3Gbps) signal and power cables, installation guide, and warranty documentation.