new 8RDA, same IDE issues...

[thebove]

some of you may know that several weeks back i bought myself an 8rda which gave me all sorts of problems as far as ide and gaming performance went. game graphics and sound would skip randomly, and anytime there was heavy ide activity (like transferring large files or installing programs) my mouse cursor would be very jumpy when i moved it. i tried new drivers for everything, my video card, nforce drivers, my ata133 card, sound card, you name it, i tried it....tried several installs of win2k as well, but with no luck....so i RMA'd the board and got another one...

well, that new board is in and i'm having the EXACT same issues....the only thing i've come down to is that there is some sort of conflict or issue with my promise ata133 controller card (which i run my hard drives on) and the 8rda. my friend has a promise ata100 card on an 8rda and has no problems whatsoever with his setup...so i've got 2 questions:

1. are any of you out there running ata controller cards on your 8rda/8rda+ with or without problems, and

2. is it possible to run cd-rom drives on an ata controller? i haven't personally tried it yet, but before i go through the hassle of moving around ide cables and fixing my MBR i was curious if anyone had an answer

[russ_watters]

Why don't you try the onboard 133 controller? Also, are you sure the controller or the hard drive isn't dying.

If the controller is a Raid controller you probably can't run atapi devices on it. If its just an ata controler, then you probably can.

[sgtgto]

Hi:

Why do you want to run an ide controller card?


Gary

[thebove]

no, individually the hard drives and ata controller card are fine....i've been running them for a year and a half now, and when i swap them back the the 8kha they run flawlessly. it is just an ata card, so i'll have to see if the cd-roms do ok on it. and the reason i even run the card is so i don't have any devices sharing IDE channels, they all haev their own dedicated channel where thay can be master

[Lord Vetinari]

Assume you have the latest derivers for the IDE controller?
Does this thread have anything to do with it?
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/view...pu+utilisation

[Mechanic]

Why are you using the controller card? What's wrong with the on-board controller? Try it and see if you have the same problem. I would think there could be conflicts between the nForce 2 drivers or chipset and the controller card's drivers although large file transfer problems are the first sign of controller chip problems. I have had a couple of motherboard failures that had the same symptoms and the on-board IDE controller was the problem. The controller chip in your card could be going bad.

[thebove]

Originally posted by Lord Vetinari
Assume you have the latest derivers for the IDE controller?
Does this thread have anything to do with it?
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/view...pu+utilisation

nope, thanks though....the XP Nforce2 IDE drivers are not installed under win2k, which i thought was kinda weird, but they're only for winXP. i double checked it with the HDTach utility anyways though, and i'm getting good scores and low cpu utilization, so it's not that.

Originally posted by Mechanic
Why are you using the controller card? What's wrong with the on-board controller? Try it and see if you have the same problem. I would think there could be conflicts between the nForce 2 drivers or chipset and the controller card's drivers although large file transfer problems are the first sign of controller chip problems. I have had a couple of motherboard failures that had the same symptoms and the on-board IDE controller was the problem. The controller chip in your card could be going bad.

nothing's wrong with the onboard, it's just i like to have an separate IDE channel for each device, so they can be set as master....currently i have my burner on the primary onboard channel, the dvd drive on the secondary onboard, my system drive on the primary channel on the ata card, and my storage drive on the secondary channel on the ata card. and, as i mentioned before, the ata card works fine on other motherboards, as do the hard drives. i agree though that there seems to be some sort of conflict between nforce2 and the ata card - it's the only logical thing i can think of so far.

[Mechanic]

How about putting the main HD on the No. 1 motherboard IDE and the second HD on the secondary and then put the optical drives on the card. I would bet lunch that if you switch to Windows XP and load the drivers the problem goes away. I would also bet lunch that if you remove the controller card, put the HD's on the No.1 IDE and put the opticals on the secondary with the burner as master the problem goes away and you see little difference in performance. Try it and see what happens. Nothing to loose! If you remember the nForce 2 wasn't around when they wrote the code for Win2k. I doubt that Win2k can handle the chipset maxed out without drivers.

[thebove]

Originally posted by Mechanic
How about putting the main HD on the No. 1 motherboard IDE and the second HD on the secondary and then put the optical drives on the card. I would bet lunch that if you switch to Windows XP and load the drivers the problem goes away. I would also bet lunch that if you remove the controller card, put the HD's on the No.1 IDE and put the opticals on the secondary with the burner as master the problem goes away and you see little difference in performance. Try it and see what happens. Nothing to loose! If you remember the nForce 2 wasn't around when they wrote the code for Win2k. I doubt that Win2k can handle the chipset maxed out without drivers.

well, took the hard drives off and put them as masters on the onboard channels, re-wrote the MBR so the os would load with the drive on the onboard channel, and took the cd drives and put them on the ata controller card channels....so far everything is working, the skipping and stuttering has gone away, ide performance and hdd utilization is good, as it was before....now i just need to install nero and see if my burning and cd performance is ok...

[Mechanic]

Originally posted by thebove


well, took the hard drives off and put them as masters on the onboard channels, re-wrote the MBR so the os would load with the drive on the onboard channel, and took the cd drives and put them on the ata controller card channels....so far everything is working, the skipping and stuttering has gone away, ide performance and hdd utilization is good, as it was before....now i just need to install nero and see if my burning and cd performance is ok...

How about removing the controller card and try that. Then lunch is on you at Mr. B's. You VERY seldome ever copy HD to HD so both HD's on the same IDE controller should never cause a problem. The newer buffered burners almost never suffer the dreaded buffer under run if there isn't a lot of crap running in the background on your system. Try the burner and the DVD on the second IDE. Set the burner as master. You may be shocked to find that you don't need the controller card at all.

[Mechanic]

I'm curious and getting hungry. What happened?

[thebove]

well...the cd burner and dvd ran fine off the ata controller, so i thought i'd be fine, but the issues and skipping in games popped up again and has become quite prevalent, so i took out the controller altogether, as you suggested, and i'm still having problems in games.

with the ata controller completely out of the system, my next suspect is the sound card, because every single time the video skips so does the sound....anyone know of any issues with sb live 5.1's and the 8rda?

[Mechanic]

You might try removing the sound card, enabling the on-board sound on the motherboard and load the drivers from the Install disk that came with the motherboard for the on-board sound. The on-board chip is really good and it is 6 channel full duplex. I don't think the 5.1 is much better.

Remember that you are dealing with a chipset on the motherboard that didn't exist when a lot of the hardware you are using was made. Also the OS you are using really doesn't know what to do with the chipset. You might consider XP or XP-Pro. ALL the drivers are up to date and that is probably your problem. Compatability with the Nvidia chipset, Win2K and compromized drivers.

[talldude]

Here's my suggestion:

1. Remove ALL UNNECESSARY COMPONENTS. Have 1 HDD, plus the bare bones package. Use all onboard stuff that you can.
2. Test the comp, it should run everything fine, if it doesn't, then who knows where the prob is.
3. Start plugging components back in. Only put in 1 component at a time and test. This way you should find your culprit.

[thebove]

just to keep you guys updated on what's goin on with this 8rda, i finally got around to testing out my sound card conflict theory, and took out my sb live and enabled the onboard audio...but, the skipping is still there...so, when i find the time again, i'll have to pull my network card, and try some different ram too - what a nuisance this thing has been, everyone else's seem to work fine