Oh OK, AMD:
http://support.amd.com/en...nload/auto-detect-tool

And chipsets sorry:
http://www.amd.com/uk/products/desktop/chipsets/Pages/desktop-chipsets.aspx
 

The chipset is ASMEDIA. I put on the latest drivers for the ASMEDIA controller and the other USB options also have latest drivers.

I will not be using that driver boost program again. I checked everything manually before and I had the latest and greatest. I found it highly suspect that the utility found 12 items to update. After that update, I was all hosed up. hours later, I am now back to where I was before running that program.

It is a cool concept, but it bit me in the arse...

I appreciate the help though Alex.  ;) 

Yeah again sorry didn't work out...

worse things have happened :)

Hi, Conley.
 
I have been battling drum sequencing demons all day, and still have about 60 measures to put together by hand.  (I don't loop)
 
Anyways, I thought I would see where things stand for you at this point.  I do confess that I skipped a large chunk of the middle of these 3 pages, but did pop in about half way down page 2 through to here.
 
Have you ever run DPC Latency Checker and/or LatencyMon?  These are freeware programs that you would download and run, to get an idea of your system's basic ability to handle streaming audio, such as what Sonar does.
 
Last I checked DPC Latency Checker does not run on Windows 8, but works great on Win 7, and LatencyMon works well on both 7 and 8.
 
Here is the link for DPC Latency Checker: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
And, LatencyMon: http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon
 
Run one or both the above, without Sonar running, to get an idea of where things stand at the system level.  If there are latency spikes outside of Sonar, then those need to get analyzed and resolved prior to dealing with any performance analysis/resolution within Sonar.
 
I am off to sequence up some more drums, but will gladly escape frequently from that to check on this thread and a couple of others I am looking into.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks Bob, I will give that a go in the morning.

There appears to be some issue with X3 and RME's drivers.  There are a few of us using RME units and who are having similar issues (pops, clicks, lags, inability to change ASIO buffers within Sonar without restarting, poor performance in general).  Our experiences are quite similar - we have systems are very stable and glitch free under prior Sonar versions (e.g., X2, 8.5) but have issues with X3 that appear driver related.  The fact that these older versions of Sonar still work well suggests it is not some hardware issue, nor even a driver issue per se, but something about how Sonar X3 is interacting with the drivers.  Common potential fixes such as deleting Aud.ini and rescanning plugins have not helped. 
 
In my case the situation is not terrible but a nuisance.  I can still do work, but the pops and lags etc. are an annoyance and a bit of an embarrassment when working with clients.
 
Seth, I hope you are still monitoring this thread. Any way you can look into this?  I have posted a similar request on the RME forums but again I suspect it is a problem on Sonar's end more than RME's.

Aside from drivers, I used the latency checker (back when I was still on X2) to help identify and close a mobo utility that was creating problems. I also find that Gobbler even at its lowest settings can interfere.  That being said, while these fixes help overall performance the driver issue described above remains.