MSAHCI SATA Driver. Do we need anything else?

Hello.

I have been doing some tests on several Intel chipset hardware (mostly i7, 5th, 7th, 8th gen., running SATA drives from HDD 5400rpm to HDD 7200rpm to SSD). When doing winsat disk test, I have noticed there is little to no speed differences when using w10's MS native AHCI driver vs any Intel one (including the ones from IRST). More so, I have noticed latency is always lower with the msahci driver (which seems to be a good thing).

My 5th gen. i7 with SSD seems to boot up and shutdown a little faster with msahci driver too, so my question is do we really need anything else these days? Is there any scenario when Intel ones are needed (RAID or Optane maybe)?

What do you think and what are you using? I have also checked that ms ahci driver also works fine for a m2 ssd on AMD chipset (Ryzen processor).

I have intel SSDs on my notebook computer, one is NVMe in the M.2 slot and the other is SATA 6GB. The computer has an Intel CPU and HM370 chipset. I'm using the Intel controller driver (iaStorAC.sys version 16.7.0.1009). That's actually an older version, I had an issue with the latest version. Anyway I get fairly close to advertised speeds with my drives and no drive errors so I'm happy with it.

I've never even tried the MS drivers, but probably not a big concern since that stuff is pretty standard. I think the only time you'd have to use the manufacturer drivers is for something not supported by the MS drivers.

Debating on switching my Intel I7 7700 from Standard MS Drivers to Intel Drivers, but not sure if its worth it or not, or i'd see any performance improvement or not. Not sure if even Asus has the latest version on the site for my system or not

Or may just stick with the MSAHCI Sata driver

Thanks for the replies.

AMDMan2016

You can always switch back and forth and do some speed tests. I am guessing you will probably notice any or no difference.

Thanks for the tip TairikuOkami.

Mine is currently using 0.1% cpu with Total Commander, Foobar, Firefox, and WhatsApp opened.

In fact cpu and disk use is around 1-3%.