GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

[Nightingale]

Recently I purchased an Intel X25-M G2 to go along with my Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5. Because of the fact that only MS-AHCI drivers are capable of passing trim along to the Intel drive I have no choice but to use them.
There seems to be a serious problem with some Gigabyte boards. When I goggled this issue what surprised me was that 90% of the people who had the same problem as me, all had Gigabyte Boards.

Here is the exact problem:

When the system boots to Windows 7 upon reaching the splash-screen(windows boot screen) it hangs for 40 sec while the windows logo pulsates. It makes no difference weather it's I use a standard HDD or a fresh install of windows or weather I have only one primary drive attached.
When booting into IDE mode or using the ATI AHCI driver it boots instantly, there is no delay, I only see the windows logo/boot screen for 3 seconds. I know of other people who use the MS-AHCI drivers on different board manufactures who do not experience this problem. So it seems to be mostly isolated with those running Gigabyte boards. I am assuming that this is a gigabyte Bios issue than can hopefully be fixed. Maybe this has to do with the AHCI ROM bios. I know Gigabyte with there past Intel boards had a huge delay with there AHCI rom initialization and booting in AHCI.

If anyone can please shed some light on this issue I would be eternally grateful as would the many others dealing with this problem.

Also does anyone know what the best course of action would be to inform Gigabyte of this issue in hopes of them looking into this this and getting a fix.

[jelbo]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

I can confirm this. GA-770TA-UD3 with SSDSA2MH080G2R, using MS AHCI driver.

[Nightingale]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

The question is what can be done to resolve this issue, Everywhere I ask nobody has a clue.

[Nightingale]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

lol, I love the top quality support provided by Gigabyte.

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

It's the Microsoft AHCI driver! - once you use the correct "chipset" AHCI driver the problem goes away. At least it is here on my AMD box

what can be done? Gigabyte know or they have to find out - as long as the problem can be fixed with the appropriate driver there is no real issue.

[Nightingale]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

I am using the correct driver for AHCI. Nothing wrong with MS-AHCI, works fine on Intel boards as well as other AMD platforms. MS-AHCI is needed in order to pass the trim commands along to the SSD. ATI AHCI can't do this.

Plus this is a Gigabyte issue, as I mentioned earlier many people experiencing this problem all have the Gigabyte boards. My roommates MSI GD70 790fx board does not suffer from this issue when using the MS-AHCI drivers.

[jelbo]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

Yeah this is really frustrating. I'll have to wait ONE minute each time at startup, and one of the reasons I bought this expensive Intel SSD is to have a fast startup time!

I also find it too risky to try any AMD AHCI driver; Windows 7 keeps telling me it can't guarantee the driver will work if I select it, and from my recent experience of Windows not booting anymore in AHCI mode when switching drivers I'm scared to try it...

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

Just use IDE mode and the problem is fixed for you, jelbo!

[jelbo]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

I'm back to IDE mode and my pc boots to the Win7x64 logon screen in 30 secs now. Still pretty long for an SSD no?

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

No, a hdd takes longer ~45s for me

[Nightingale]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

It's the Microsoft AHCI driver! - once you use the correct "chipset" AHCI driver the problem goes away. At least it is here on my AMD box

what can be done? Gigabyte know or they have to find out - as long as the problem can be fixed with the appropriate driver there is no real issue.

Wrong Gigabyte could give 2 ****s about rectifying this problem since it would be much easier to sweep it under the rug. This TOP END AM3 mobo clealry is not on there list of priorities. It looks like they just quickly released it for the sake of being able to advertise being the first MOBO manufacture to have incorporated USB 3.0 and SATA onboard.

Here is a small snippet from a group of people in another forum having the same problems.

Apparently this is a known problem reported by Anandtech, Tomshardware, and TechRepublic. Anandtech reported notified Gigabyte about one of their boards having AHCI troulbe and they quickly came back to them with updated BIOS or drivers. Unfortunately they have not done this for all of their boards. It seems that this is both an AMD problem and a Gigabyte problem.

I notified Gigabyte support, but I have not received any satisfying answers as of yet..

Rather than deal with this they instead appear to be treating it like an isolated incident. We'll see what they say next, but I doubt that I'm going to get any satisfaction by going down this route. There's likely an obnoxious checklist they will try to run me through 3 or 4 times (hours of wasted time) before issuing an RMA, which will do nothing to solve the problem.

We need tech journalists to make some more noise and force them to address this at a higher level. You and I are just talking to peons when we call tech support.

Unless they fix this issue in the Long Delayed F3 bios(apparently it's in alpha state talk about slow) I will make sure to never buy anything from this dismal company(that that loves to leave it's customers out in the dark and to warn all future buyers that Gigabyte is simply not the company they once used to be.

We are talking about there flagship AM3 Mobo. Yet they are to lazy to even release an updated BIOS. Board came out late November last bios was DEC 11 2009 F2

[M@rcB]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

On this board http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=240085&page=6 you can find the .f3a bios. Also the .f3f version is listed in .bin format. Unfortunately, the .f3f version is not accepted by QFlash.

Somebody any idea where to find the .f3f version? The .f3a did solve several issues I had.

[jelbo]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

Any progress in this matter? It still botherstremendously that my bootup and game startup times are worse with my ssd that my brother's pc with an hdd...

[Nightingale]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

Any progress in this matter? It still botherstremendously that my bootup and game startup times are worse with my ssd that my brother's pc with an hdd...

Progress has been made. The New F3F Beta bios on gigabytes website has fix the boot times. Wow only took Gigabyte half a year to fix the problem. To bad they make nice hardware Mobos but the problem with Gigabyte is they are selective on what boards get proper support. That is BS and i am not interested in putting my faith with a company that gambles.

[PhenomII Dude]

Re: GigaByte AM3 Boards LAG/Crawl when booting with MS-AHCI drivers

Yep, agree, Gigabyte got pretty lazy in releasing quality AM3 bioses