SATA warning for AMD users

S

Sangram

New member
One of the most popular mobos for the AMD platform is the Asus A7N8X 2.0, deluxe version. A fully loaded board with Firewire, SATA, lots of USB 2 ports, Soundstorm with on-the-fly DD 5.1 encoding, etc.

Unfortunately, the board has a major issue with SATA in RAID 0. It introduces severe glitches in audio playback and recording. m-Audio technical support has said "there is limited success by upgrading the board's BIOS". Limited to 0, in my case.

When playing back audio, there is glitching when there is is concurrent disk activity. So even when just using winamp, it pops from time to time when the controller is sednign routine status check. Pushing the entire file to memory (buffer of 20 MB) does not aleviate the problem as it is still going off the PCI bus.

Strangely recording seems to be mostly stable, except for the occasional time when the sample rate gets completely wierd. But usable, not like the way the PC seems to redefine what 'pop' music is all about.

In any case, the only way out seems to be to move to either Intel, and those results I do not know, or to an IDE-based setup. Which is what I did, I no am dual booting on the same board to an install running off the IDE drives - which is blind to SATA - for the audio, and a different setup for my games. So I have a total of 600 GB of disk space (2x120 SATA, 2x120 IDE, and 120 GB of backups on two external drives). That I will not need to upgrade for the next few years, hopefully, provided the drives don't melt.

So if you want fast SATAs and a Delta 66, don't go AMD or Asus.
 
Sangram said:

So if you want fast SATAs and a Delta 66, don't go AMD or Asus.
Click to expand...

I run a Delta 44 through an Asus P4P800 with dual SATAs no problem.

Not sure, but if that A7n8X board is running a pci RAID controller, then that could be your problem. The intel-based mobos, eg P4P800 with the southbridge ICH5R RAID controllers seem to behave themselves better
 
Re: Re: SATA warning for AMD users

Bulls Hit said:
The intel-based mobos, eg P4P800 with the southbridge ICH5R RAID controllers seem to behave themselves better
Click to expand...

Yes they do. And yes, the AMD platforms with SATA have the controllers hooked to the PCI bus.

In any case, my problem was solved by adding two IDE drives. A new mobo/CPU were more expensive, plus extra storage is never a bad thing, nor about to go obsolete quick.

But for new PCs, Intel would be the better way if you want SATA RAID.
 
my intel system and my amd system run sata 10k rpm drives.
my amd system is a xp2500 clocked to 3000 and i'm using A7N8X 2 deluxe. works fine for me with a delta 1010.... :confused: :confused:
or should i say i haven't had a problem YET. i was using a abit nf7 but i had to buy a new mb about a month ago... it was between the DFI and the asus and i went with the asus. another 135 outta my pocket:mad:
 
c9-2001 said:
my intel system and my amd system run sata 10k rpm drives.
my amd system is a xp2500 clocked to 3000 and i'm using A7N8X 2 deluxe. works fine for me with a delta 1010.... :confused: :confused:
or should i say i haven't had a problem YET.
Click to expand...

That's very interesting.

Can you please do me a BIG favour and let me know the following, I will also try your combo and see if it works. If the 1010 works good for you, so should my Delta 66.

1. Are you running RAID 0 or single drives.
2. SATA Bios version (in the screen after the first BIOS screen, the first line has the SATA Bios version. Mine is 4.2.47)
3. BIOS version on the board (first boot screen, top line)
4. Sata driver revision (from Device Manager)
5. m-Audio driver revision (from 'About' in the m-Audio Control)
6. OS used

Thanks a ton, this may help me actually get a stable AND fast system without dual-booting. Whenever I playback (regardless of the software used) and try to copy files, I get warbling, and even on normal playback it will pop and stutter as it reads the MP3 tag off the disk. Once the disk activity ceases, the sound becomes normal, but there is an intermittent 'popping' as the system transfers data over the bus or reads the disk.
 
KT600

Polaris20 said:
Not really true. The Asus A7V600 (KT600 chipset) works just fine, as it has a different RAID controller.
Click to expand...

You are right of course, I should've said nForce2, but c9 says he's running succesfully, when m-Audio believes there is a definite issue, I want to solve this for my case as well.

The KT600 has a separate connection for the SATA which bypasses the PCI. The Sil is a very fast controller but is limited by the bandwidth of the PCI bus. The KT600 has no such problems, neither does the ICHR5.
 
well maybe mines working cuz i only have 1 sata drive.. i have 2 ide drives on ide1.

Sangram

i'll be able to get all details when i get home tonight
 
Thanks a ton, I will also try single drive combos tonight. These timezones are bad, I won't get your info till tomorrow then. But I'm guessing I'll have enough to play with till then..
 
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