Gigabyte/Jmicron 363 vs. Intel ICH8R setup and performance help

I have a Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 rev 2.0 motherboard. I am installing 4 SATA devices, 2 WD SATA Raptor in RAID, a WD SATA Caviar SE and a Samsung SATA optical drive.

I'm currently testing the CPU and memory before I install the OS, Win XP32 sp2b. I read the Gigabyte manual and would like some clarification on the install and setup for the ICH8R Intel controller and the Gigabyte GBB363 (Jmicron) controller. As I've never done a RAID/AHCI install before, I'd like some expert help, please.

Performance-wise, I've read a number of opinions and a couple reviews and still can't decide if I should put all 4 SATA drives on the Intel ICH8R SATA ports and disable the Gigabyte controller, or just put the two RAID drives on the Intel and put the third drive and optical drive on the Gigabyte/Jmicron SATA ports.

Any opinions on stability or performance of these two options?

If I choose the second one, I have some questions about the install. Since I'm using both controllers, I clearly need to follow the F6 driver install from floppy for the Intel ICH8R. The manual seems clear enough on this.

Do I also need the Gigabyte F6 Floppy install for AHCI on the third drive and optical?

If so, does Windows XP setup give the option to setup two separate controllers from two separate floppy disks when using the F6 install?

If I need to somehow combine both sets of drivers on to one floppy or CD-ROM, I'd like to know in advance and figure out how to do that. Thank you in advance!

chaostim said:

Performance-wise, I've read a number of opinions and a couple reviews and still can't decide if I should put all 4 SATA drives on the Intel ICH8R SATA ports and disable the Gigabyte controller, or just put the two RAID drives on the Intel and put the third drive and optical drive on the Gigabyte/Jmicron SATA ports.

Click to expand...

Try both and see. Set up one, use it for a while, then swap the cables to the other controller and see how that works. It should be trivially easy to do.

If I choose the second one, I have some questions about the install. Since I'm using both controllers, I clearly need to follow the F6 driver install from floppy for the Intel ICH8R. The manual seems clear enough on this.

Do I also need the Gigabyte F6 Floppy install for AHCI on the third drive and optical?

If so, does Windows XP setup give the option to setup two separate controllers from two separate floppy disks when using the F6 install?

If I need to somehow combine both sets of drivers on to one floppy or CD-ROM, I'd like to know in advance and figure out how to do that. Thank you in advance!

Click to expand...

I accidentally did something like this a few days ago, so I can answer. Yes you'll need both drivers and yes, when XP finishes with one, it'll ask you if you want to do another and ask for another floppy. It will keep asking until you run out of drivers.

Thanks!

I guess this is one that stumps the storage experts, as no one seems to have tried or tested it. I'll install the drivers for both and probably start by using just the ICH8R and disabling the Giga LAN in BIOS. One less annoying thing to stall out during bootup...