CPU meter maxes out in Sonar 6....please help am going mad!!

have you reinstalled your os,a clean install?
it is common practice to reinstall a fresh os when replacing the mobo this is under any curcimstances

If you just replaced the motherboard and kept the same disks and firewire adapter, then it logically follows that the slowness must be attributed to the motherboard, as opposed to drivers or buffers. That pretty much narrows it down to BIOS settings and interrupt assignments. Don't go tweaking Windows until you figure out what's eating your CPU cycles. Keep in mind that it's a CPU problem, so you don't get distracted by advice to defrag your drives or disable virtual memory or any of the other stuff that has nothing to do with CPU resources.

Verify that the firewire interface does in fact have its own IRQ. It can look like you're assigning an IRQ in the BIOS, but ACPI does not respect that setting. Check Device Manager or use a system info utility to be sure. While you're in DM, disable the network option (e.g. "1394 Net Adapter") for your firewire adapter. If the motherboard has a built-in firewire interface, disable it in the BIOS.

In the BIOS, look for anything that can be disabled, such as unused ports, HPET, and especially the onboard audio interface. Turn off power-saving options and AMD's equivalent to SpeedStep, whatever that's called. Disable core parking and anything else having to do with processor throttling. If you're using an onboard network adapter, try disabling it, too. Just to see if the problem goes away. NICs are notorious for excessive interrupt overhead, especially wireless NICs.

Run the DPC Latency Checker and look for big spikes that might indicate a hardware device that's hogging system resources. If you do see them, the network adapter should be prime suspect #1.

@ BITFLIPPER:- Thanks, I did check the IRQ for the Firewire card, it was IRQ20 (which according to Windows device manager was not being shared), but I am guessing that the IRQ number equates to the order the CPU gives time to?...if this is the case, then IRQ20 was the last in the list! If not, then I will try the DPC Latency checker and see what's going on. I'll also have a delve into the BIOS just in case I missed anything when I first set the unit up. BTW, the onboard audio is disabled (One of the first things i did!).

I'm kinda hoping it's not the firewire card , but seeing as thats the only original piece of hardware thats being used, I'm guessing that maybe the MOBO doesn't like the card (which is PCI BTW), perhaps a PCIe firewire card my work better as the MOBO doesn't have built in firewire? I'm going to try the DPC checker though just to be sure and systematically disable components to see what's going on!!

its kinda what ive thought all this time,i think its got something to do with that pinncle card,
have you tried switching over to mme(your driver mode) to test?

if you use your onboard soundcard as a test we can narrow it down and see if you still have the problem.

see if you use mmme(onboard soundcard)and your computer isnt spiking,
its that pinncle card.

cause what i had though all along here was,though your os is comp with the card,the mobo is not.
it will ofcourse work,but the ramifications are the examples your getting now.

go into preferences/driver options/change it to mme/run the wave profiler
check the module to see if your still maxing out.
hit play as well,check it out well the transport is moving.

if it displays no issues,well,then i think youve found your issue.
i could be wrong,maybe there is something in the bios that can majicaly make this all better,but im kinda leaning toward the side on not.

I get the same reaction from my Tascam but only under 32 OS both Vista and XP. It does not happen under W7 64 bit.It's strange and I've asked on a few forums if anyone else gets this result and so far no one else reported back. Very few people are still on 32 bit anymore I guess. Under 32 bit, the minue you turn the Tascam on the Dpclat jumps to yellow ( not red) under 64 bit there is zero change in levels.

good news andy,happy here 4 you buddy