I will start with I have no issue with IDE mode on my system with the setup I have. I recently bought a CORSAIR GS series SSD and wanted to make sure I was getting the best performance forom it. I know almost nothing about AHCI and what I am supposed to be getting.
 
I have the following system config:
 
ASUS Sabertooth 990 FX
amd fx-8150 8 core processor am3+
16G Corsair 1066 DDR3
PNY GTX670 2g gddr5
Corsair Force GS 240G SSD
2 - Samsung HD103UJ SATA drives
WDC WD100FALS SATA
RME FireFace 800 UFX - USB drivers
SONY DVD+-R/RW
LG BR+HD Multi ROM
SONAR Producer 8.5+, X1, X2 + hotfixes
Win7 Ultimate 64
 
I changed to AHCI in the BIOS and the system is rock solid stable and has a performance rating of 7.6 in the windows control panel. It was 5.6 so I know I have an improvement.
 
I have all of the latest ASMedia 106 drivers for the SATA controller. I have zero IDE native components in this machine.
 
I have the latest driver for my UFX too. Rock solid in IDE mode with all versions of SONAR.
 
When I setup AHCI, the system is rock solid, but all versions of SONAR dropout. I even have the ASIO buffers up to 2048 during playback and still get dropouts. The 8 cores are showing no load whatsoever and there is plenty of room on the drives that the project is coming from. The drive has 1% fragmentation so the files are pretty much lined up.
 
Any help/thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I searched the forums, but nothing recent seems to apply that I have found. TIA!
 
 
 
 

Assuming you installed Windows with the BIOS set to IDE, then as well as enabling AHCI in the BIOS, did you make the necessary registry change in Windows?

Thanks for the reply. yes, the registry was changed with the windows fix-it utility from M$.

In which case, sorry but I'm out of ideas at the moment, other than suggesting (if you;ve not already done it) checking the Windows event log to see if there are disc read/write errors logged, running checkdisk on everything and seeing if any drive's SMART is reporting any problems, especially the new drive.
 
Just because a drive is new doesn't mean it isn't faulty......

A switch to AHCI shouldn't in itself cause problems as far as I can see - I've done it myself on this computer (I failed to notice IDE was enabled in the BIOS by default) with no ill effects on anything whatsoever.

thanks, I have found that a latency viewer shows USBPORT.SYS ans causing spikes. I downloaded the hotfix mentioned, but said it did not apply to my application. My USBPORT drivers for Win7 are dated 2k6 so they have never been updated. Don't know what is going there either.

I am running fine with IDE, but it would be nice to know why AHCI does not work well with SONAR and my audio interface.

Turn off any AMD CPU power saving features in the BIOS and see if this makes a difference. Update your BIOS for your computer and firmware everywhere. Update drivers everywhere. Run Windows update.

Guitarmech111


thanks, I have found that a latency viewer shows USBPORT.SYS ans causing spikes. I downloaded the hotfix mentioned, but said it did not apply to my application. My USBPORT drivers for Win7 are dated 2k6 so they have never been updated. Don't know what is going there either.

I am running fine with IDE, but it would be nice to know why AHCI does not work well with SONAR and my audio interface.

Since you are using RME FireFace 800 UFX - USB drivers and that is showing the latency spikes, my guess would be looking into the interface settings and drivers. A good audio interface should not have glitches.

Oh and in addition to my previous post also update your motherboard chipset drivers...

I basically took all the ASUS provided utilities out of the mix, removed the 670 utilities and flashed my BIOS. My gut feeling is that the utilities were the culprit. I have just the basic drivers and no mainboard or video utilities running and my system is more stable in AHCI mode. What a PITA. I should have stuck to my real gut feeling that a DAW should not have to have all that other stuff installed.

For a DAW - the KISS principle for utilities is a good start.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Much appreciated that you took time to check up on this for me. Been gone for a bit, but I still like this place!  :)