msahci vs. iaStor

My new laptop has an Intel chipset. The official driver package only changes the disk controller's name in the device manager, while still using Microsoft's msahci driver. But the "real" one (iaStor) can be obtained through other sources, and installs and works fine.

Which one do you suggest I use for maximum performance? I ran a benchmark on both drivers; msahci was a handful of MB/s faster than iaStor under the same conditions, then slightly slower. I have already done a search on the Internet, and expectedly found arguments for and against both.

Well logic dictates that a driver from its manufacturer would have more performance than the generic, msahci, one.
Why not try one at a time and run a benchmark on the drives, like bench32 and see for yourself. And also post the results here so that I and others can be enlightened.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Well logic dictates that a driver from its manufacturer would have more performance than the generic, msahci, one.

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And then we met companies like ATI AMD who code shit drivers. Little logic in the field of drivers, I'm afraid.

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Why not try one at a time and run a benchmark on the drives, like bench32 and see for yourself. And also post the results here so that I and others can be enlightened.

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Doesn't the OP state he has already done so and they were inconclusive?


Anyway, my two cents: unless you're doing something funky, leave the disk drivers alone. You're only bringing a headache upon yourself. You're not going to notice a few MB's anyway, it's not worth the trouble nor time.
Don't try to fix what isn't broken dude, spent that time on something more useful ;-)

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Originally Posted by Master Razor

Well logic dictates that a driver from its manufacturer would have more performance than the generic, msahci, one.

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That's what I thought, until I read some forum posts about how iaStor slowed things down and caused freezes. In this particular case, whether there are any benefits is likely hardware-dependent.

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Originally Posted by Sazzy

unless you're doing something funky, leave the disk drivers alone. You're only bringing a headache upon yourself. You're not going to notice a few MB's anyway, it's not worth the trouble nor time.

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But everything in my system must be tweaked for maximum performance! :geek: That's why I only have six svchost.exe processes running on Windows 7.

I may run a few more tests, but I can see myself heeding your advice. Since neither the chipset driver package nor the preinstalled Windows 8 OS used Intel's driver (granted, Windows 8 includes the newer storahci), I'm guessing Microsoft's one is the better choice anyway.

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But everything in my system must be tweaked for maximum performance! That's why I only have six svchost.exe processes running on Windows 7.

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Whatever you did/planning to do, don't do it. You can only mess up your system.

Been running like this for several years now. I don't miss any functionality, and the extra available RAM results in better performance for everything merely by avoiding the paging file. This was particularly noticeable with my first laptop, which only had 1 GB.

But today RAM is the cheapest part in a computer :huh:

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Originally Posted by Sazzy

But today RAM is the cheapest part in a computer :huh:

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And all of my laptops have as much of it as they can support :happy: But that's not a lot (two, two and four GB).

The desktop only has one gig and a half, but DDR1 sticks cost a bit more than what I'd pay for an upgrade I don't really need anyway. It runs Windows 2003 and nothing too memory-intensive.