Asus A7N8X SATA Corruption with intense AGP card load

[rpertusio]

This is a lot of information, but I wanted to cover all the bases, hoping someone will spot something

Starting off with my specs...
Motherboard: Asus A7N8X Deluxe (rev2.00) BIOS 1007
SATA BIOS: 4.2.27
Processor: AMD Athlon 1700+ @ 2400+
Hard drives:
- Maxtor 6Y080P0 (80GB 8MB, P-ATA)
- Maxtor 6L040J2 (40GB 2MB, P-ATA)
- Maxtor 6Y160P0 (160GB 8MB, P-ATA)
P-ATA to SATA adapters: HighPoint RocketHead 100
Gfx Card: Radeon 9700 Pro (367/342)
Memory: 512MB OCZ DDR466 PC3700 EL
PSU: Antec TrueBlue 480W
Drivers:
- Chipset (nForce2): 3.13 WHQL
- SATA (Silicon Image SiI 3112r): 1.0.0.40 WHQL
- Video (ATI): Omega Catalyst 4.1
- OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

Setup:
- 1 or 2 drives (non-RAID setup) on the Serial ATA channel using the above mentioned SATA to PATA converters
- 1 drive on the Parallel (PATA) channel


The symptoms:
- System locks up for minutes ONLY during graphics intense operations such as 3D gaming, watching DVDs, etc
- Hard drive 'LED' light is constantly lit during this lockup, with no hard drive activity audibly heard
- Unplugging SATA (and strictly using PATA) has NO problems whatsoever
- System will return to 'normal' operation after the few minutes of hanging
- ChkDsk detects errors afterwards, and MBR and registry is corrupt (but repairable in most cases)
- SATARaid utility occasionally triggers a "Device Removed" event log
- Event Logs kick the following errors during lockup:

Event ID: 51
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

Event ID: 11
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\D.

Event ID: 15
The device, \Device\Harddisk2\D, is not ready for access yet.

Event ID: 57
The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

Event ID: 55
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume F:.

Things I have tried and ruled out:
- Tried different motherboard BIOS versions (1004, 1005, etc which all include different SATA ROM BIOS revisions)
- Tested multiple versions of the SiI 3112 driver (including direct from Asus and SiI)
- Tried RAID, Non-RAID versions of the drivers
- Formatted and re-installed Windows XP 3 times (tried plain, SP1, SP2 flavors)
- Formatted & Installed eval version of Windows Server 2003
- Tested hard drives for errors with Maxtor's PowerMax utility (passed with flying colors)
- Changed sata cables, messed with jumpers on drives (master)
- Tried spare converter (in case 1st one was faulty)
- Ran MEMTEST86 (passed with flying colors)
- Used modded BIOS (Uber) to adjust hidden settings (increased/decreased Voltages/frequencies)
- Increased cooling (CPU at 41C, MB at 24C)
- Ran chkdsk and other disk checking programs
- Tried SATAraid utility to lower UDMA and turn off write-caching
- Used different IDE drivers (Microsoft WHQL and nVidia's)
- Re-seated everything in the case, unplugged non-essentials
- Studied power supply voltages on all rails
- Lowered AGP speed (to 4X instead of 8X), lowered voltage from 1.7v to 1.5v, raised AGP frequency from 66mhz
- Tried 3 different drives, in pairs and singles (listed up top)

Somewhat significant findings:
- Underclocked vid card (LESS corruption/lockups)
- Tried different, less powerful video card (took longer for system to lock up)
- Graphics card and SATA use IRQ 11 on POST screen (I freed up IRQs using BIOS, turned off unneeded devices, no improvement)
- Installing XP using the Parallel ATA interface has no problems until it accesses data on other (SATA) drives
- Intense disk activity (defragmenting, large file copies) have NO problems

My suspicions
- Bad SATA ROM or bad drivers (there were earlier drivers that were known to cause corruptions)
- Motherboard designed badly (PCI devices like AGP and SiI use same IRQ 11 in POST)
- Voltage too low for SATA ROM (or PCI devices like AGP cards 'steal' its power)
- Serial ATA converters don't work as intended
- Problem with Maxtor drives

Future
- Try different SATA converters
- Get a 'real' SATA drive (but if it fails, then a waste of money)
- ??? (I'm open to suggestions)

I've exhausted my brainpower. Anyone have a clue why the SATA controller is having so much difficulty performing under intense AGP load?

- rp

[Edit: clarified some statements]

[Xtreeme]

ALOT of folks have trouble with those PATA adaptors. They arent so hot. ALOT of them purely incompat in themeselves and causeing problems.

[rpertusio]

Just FYI.. an update on this thread..

I bought 2 WD Raptors (S-ATA), and hooked em up. For the life of me, I couldn't get the corruptions/lock ups to occur again! That's a good thing!

My conclusion:
- The Serial ATA adapters (or the mix of Maxtor+Serial ATA adapters) caused these problems for me.

Furthermore, upon advice of someone, I tried out a DFI LanParty Ultra II B motherboard, which uses a slightly different Serial ATA controller (SiI 3114). I think I'm going to keep it! I didn't think I would find a motherboard that would be 'better' than my Asus A7N8X Deluxe, but it appears DFI has come out of nowhere with an amazing motherboard.

- rp

[Jeordiewhite]

DFI had been making early motherboards for intel and amd, back around early intel chips and amd.
They had gone away from the motherboard market for awhile, last i seen of them was a k6 processor.
However they are making quite a come back apparantly with their lanparty motherboards. I would suggest you keep it if it works, unless you are going to have to spend a good ammount more I would keep the asus motherboard if it works now and the other drives are hooked up via pata.
If not the DFI motherboard is great, haven't really heard anything bad coming from them, only good about them. However it's your money so if you are able to, go for it and sell the asus board and it shouldn't set you back too much if you are sure that is what you want. Because performance/features aren't really any differen't, same archtecture/features pretty much, except for one dual gigabit lan like they added to the asus a7n8x deluxe E board, just a newer version.

[rpertusio]

Agreed Jeordiewhite.. the boards are very similar. In fact, there is a 'shootout' over at FiringSquad: nForce2 Ultra 400 Shootout: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe vs DFI LANPARTY NFII Ultra B

I am liking the 4 SATA connectors, black motherboard, accessories, etc

- rp