ASRock Z68 Gen3 Mobo's

[alex666]

All I did when I set up my system originally was to enable AHCI and set my ssd as the main boot drive. Honestly I've not looked into the Intel Rapid storage thing at all. Then again, I use my ssd to hold a few games along with Win 7 itself, so I'm not sure that IRS would be applicable in my situation.

I have considered that. But I have a sata 6 1TB Caviar handy, my son actually does a lot of video creation at times, and a small modestly-priced ssd working in conjunction with the Caviar might work. Plus, it would be fun to see how it compares in real life.

The Lucid Virtu technology is escaping me. I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to do other than letting the user have the option of using the dedicated video card or using the on-chip video o save power. I installed the software last night, and video does work both ways. I'll have to play around with it some more. Find more data on it.

But so far, a good board as best as I can tell, and at a very reasonable price given the features. Off to work.

marty

[alex666]

New little bump. I'm having troubles booting into windows in AHCI mode all of a sudden. I get BSODs. As soon as I change to IDE mode in the bios, the BSOD goes away. Might I have corrupted something in Win 7 in the process of benchmarking that only causes problems in AHCI mode? BTW, I will be reinstalling Win 7 in a few days when I get my new copy of it (I've run out of installs on my current version), so there's no great loss here, as I've got the minimum installed to benchmark only. Thanks.

SOLVED. I realized I had installed win 7 while in IDE mode. Somehow, however, I've been able to run it while switching to AHCI mode in the bios, and suddenly it stopped working, at least that's what appears to have happened. Not sure actually. But I made some changes in the registry, and now all is well, it boots fine in AHCI mode.

marty

[alex666]

Hey, I'm totally jazzed. I had set up my board on a 1TB Black Caviar in IDE mode. I have since learned how to change registry settings to that I can switch from RAID to AHCI to IDE mode simply by flipping the switch in the bios so to speak. My goal was to get in RAID and then add an SSD and use the rapid speed technology acceleration feature. Lots of trial and error, but I finally got it to work tonight. And it is awesome. If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to do a step-by-step, because they make it so simple, and basically it is, but lots of things can go wrong. IL need to crash, but it is a very cool feature. Great engineering, Intel, my hat is off.

marty