I just put together a new rig. My drives are NCQ and 3.0 Gb/s SATA II. Do I get a performance benefit by switching the BIOS setting from IDE to ACHI? I also hear I should install the drivers before I ...

What is Advanced Host Controller Interface? Advanced Host Controller Interface, or AHCI, is a technical standard for an interface that enables software to communicate with Serial ATA (SATA) devices.

Not afaik. It should be a nondestructive test to conduct (I don't have a Windows XP system to play with, and haven't had for years). I tried it, it won't boot. Yes, XP, really. It's for retro games, ...