New Intel RST driver or default Microsoft AHCI

[Soulburner]

Is there much of a consensus on these new Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers?

Date: 3/23/2010
Version: 9.6.0.1014

I can't even tell which driver I have installed. I am running the X25-M G2 80GB SSD on a new Windows 7 install. I have only installed the Intel Chipset Software, and not the RST itself.

Device Manger says Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller - 2922

When I click Driver, it says Driver Provider: Intel. However I then click Driver Details and the 4 files listed all say Provider: Microsoft Corporation.

They are:

atapi.sys
ataport.sys
msahci.sys
pciidex.sys

I can Roll Back the driver, but I don't even know which one I am using because of the conflicting information. From what I've read, the device would say Microsoft AHCI or something if I were using the default driver.

I'd like to know what others are using. Information is scarce on the net so far, with no direct benchmarks except for one that only looks at I/O. This is the one that people are talking about in regards to enabling TRIM in RAID setups (which may not be true). General wisdom seems to have been up to this point, the default MS driver was the best and is TRIM enabled. How is the new Intel RST driver?

[flamenko]

I found no performance difference whatsoever on a single ssd. TRIM is enabled with both Intel and MS drivers. There is something going on with raid as just about everyone who watches performance closely concedes that shortly after a large deletion, performance is returning to it normal state which means that either TRIM or great garbage collection is going on there.

[Soulburner]

Updated to the latest RST and found no performance difference. I'm really liking the 0.065 ms access times of this SSD though

Now when I look in the driver details in Device Manager, there is only 1 listed:

iaStor.sys

Provider: Intel Corporation

It appears I was still using the Microsoft AHCI driver, the default provided with Windows 7. Up until now this was the only TRIM enabled driver, now apparently the new Intel RST supports automatic TRIM as well.

[Soulburner]

Here are some links to articles/threads about these:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1504578
http://www.servethehome.com/ocz-vert...rks-intel-rst/
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18653