Benchmarking the Latest Hardware is Fun, Unless… Part Two?

Earlier this month, I posted a small rant about how benchmarking can be fun unless something goes wrong. I’m not sure what it is, but no matter what I do, or how hard I try to get on top of things, something is always destined to go wrong. This past weekend was no different! Once again, we planned for a busy week of content, ranging from motherboard reviews, to even a new CPU review, but alas, the poltergeist that sits in our lab won’t let that happen easily.

As we received our copies of Windows 7 recently, I decided it would be a great idea to begin using it for our testing where able. Since we polished off a new methodology for our motherboards, I figured it’d be a great idea to begin using the OS there. So far, so good, and all the issues I’ve experienced are absolutely not related to the OS, which is a stark contrast with how things went down during the Vista launch.

So what problem could I have possibly run into? Well, to understand that, it may pay to check out our recent testing methodologies article (still a work-in-progress). Essentially, to make our lives easier we install the OS we’re going to use, along with the applications we need, and then back up the entire thing as an Acronis backup, so that we can restore that same image each time we test a new motherboard, processor, graphics card, et cetera.

Of course, we don’t install system drivers prior to making a backup, because that would cause issues down the road. Neither do we use an image on platforms it’s not intended for. For example, if we create an image built on a P55 motherboard, we don’t use it on anything except P55 motherboards. We’ve done this for quite a while, and haven’t had a real problem up to this point.

Our Windows 7 Desktop for Motherboard-Testing

Until this weekend, of course. I am not pointing fingers here, but the problem lies with our Gigabyte P55-UD5, and the issue comes down to AHCI. We have used AHCI mode for our S-ATA and ODDs for the past year or so, as it’s faster and newer, but something about the Gigabyte board doesn’t agree with the others. Since it’s been the P55-UD5 that we began out our testing with, I decided to create the image on there.

The problem is this. After taking that image and restoring it to any other board with AHCI enabled, such as the ASUS P7P55D Pro or Intel DP55KG, Windows would blue-screen-of-death upon boot. After a lot of trial and error, I deemed this issue specific to Gigabyte’s board. If I create an image on ASUS’ or Intel’s board, and restore it to either or, there’s no problems. It all comes down to the P55-UD5, and how it handles AHCI.

Recently, Gigabyte introduced a feature called “Extreme HD” on their boards, which essentially overwrites AHCI – meaning, you will not see mention of AHCI in their BIOS’… just Extreme HD (or xHD). If you enable Extreme HD, it either means you’re going for a RAID setup, or you simply want AHCI enabled. So my question is… what is it about Gigabyte’s board that’s causing issues between boards? This is not a real issue, or a fault of Gigabyte’s (per se), as it’s only specific to people who would ever want to move their Windows over to another machine, but since I’ve never experienced the issue before, I’m definitely a little stumped.

Any motherboard vendor has the option of using secondary HD controllers, but for the primary on the system, they use the S-ATA controller in the chipset, so I’m ruling out the possibility of it being a secondary controller that’s causing an issue. Even then, I’ve restored images across many motherboards before without issue, which adds to this confusion. I’m in contact with Gigabyte regarding this, and I hope to hear back soon. If you have any idea what the problem could be, don’t hesitate to shoot off your ideas in our thread!