To Intel's Dev Team, bigdogchris and whoever else it may concern:
Intel dropped chipset support for anything older than Z/H8x in their two latest RST WHQL drivers. That's a fact. Just check the iaAHCIC.inf file on RST v13.1.0.1058 and v13.2.0.1016.
Now,
since most of its customers who actually use those latest RST drivers are rocking a "state-of-the-art" rig of sorts,
and since most of these high-end rigs require (unfortunately) Windows 8.1 for maximum performance (Sad, but true. Take BF4 & SLI/CF for instance),
I believe it's high time we get to continue and enjoy the latest drivers and the Performance and Stability which they provide with the current hardware that we have.
Regards,