Using S-ATA and Radeon 9800SE?

Question

Hi!
Have read a number of posts in this forum about the incompability between the Intel Serial-ATA controller and the Radeon series graphics card and was just wondering if there is someone out there who has come up with any real solution to the problem, other than running a Parallell-ATA disk instead? Had serious problems when trying to run 3D apps and games on my computer with an Maxtor 120GB S-ATA disk, and a Club 3D 9800SE graphics card, (instant system lockups with hard reset as the only solution), and tried all the usual stuff to get rid of the problem, (swithed PSU, upgraded the BIOS, upgraded all drivers etc.), w.o. any luck. (When I tried to install a GeForce 440MX card instead, all worket just fine). But when I switched to a P-ATA disk and installed the system on this disk instead, all problems went away! Is it MSI I should blame for installing a crappy S-ATA controller, or is it ATI who are having problems making a desent driver for their GPU? Regardless what, I would really apreciate if someone else with the same problem, and a solution, could make a post on this forum!
Regards//Frederik
Sweden

Answer 1

I have had no problems with the above mentioned combo.....  EXCEPT, when using ICH5R.  With the Promise it's worked well on most all machines except a Neo2-LS which required me to set the PCI LATENCY to 64 before it would work.  On the "few" (and I stress "few" as I do not claim to be any expert) ICH5R setups I've used, I had to set the latency as high as 128.  
Apparently since by default ATI cards want to use 255 clocks LATENCY TIMER, the SATA was only asking for 32 CLOCKS.  The Radeon was hogging up all the bus bandwidth.  Setting it to 128 cured the problem.  Either that or the AGP wasn't able to hold onto the bus long enough to properly finish it's data transactions.  Either way...
This however contradicts the notion that I've been told "PCI LATENCY TIMER CAN ONLY BE CHANGED IN WINDOWS 2K/XP using a utility like Powerstrip."  However I'm thinking that this worked for me because by choosing a medium between 32 and 255 allowed the cards to balance out in XP, as 32 clocks allowed the SATA to take too much control over the PCI Bus, or the ATI to give up too much control.
Just my .02