Drivers Make All the Difference

Update (03/29/2010): Intel has recently released a new driver that allows Windows 7's TRIM instructions to be passed through the Southbridge. The new driver is labeled "Rapid Storage Technology 9.6" and it can be found here. These drivers are also able to pass TRIM commands to RAID 0 and RAID 1 arrays.

My early testing with the new RST 9.6 driver shows that the drive is much faster than the Microsoft Windows 7 AHCI driver whilst also being just as stable. Testing has also shown a significant performance increase in many real world tests with a significant boost in the 4K range.

At this time there are some issues with drivers. Assuming you are running an Intel chipset since that is what all of the cool kids are doing these days, you do not want to install the Intel SATA drivers or Matrix Storage Manager. Microsoft has the only driver that can pass TRIM commands through the SATA ports to the drive.

The Microsoft driver does not work with all SATA controllers, but the Intel ICH SATA driver from Microsoft does. This driver is built into Windows 7 so you are already running the right driver. In time Intel will update their drivers, but we really have no idea when.

At this point you are clear to install the rest of your drivers. Don't forget the Intel Chipset driver; it doesn't overwrite the SATA drivers.