NF4 Asus A8N SLI Interrupts using RAID0, The interrupts hogs the CPU?

[T3mplar]

Greetings

System Setup
Please take a look at my sig. for rig details, note on the HD setup. The HD's are all connected to the nVidia controller.
Port 1,2 and 3 are RAID 0 enabled, port 4 SATA.
Port 1: Seagate 160GB NCQ
Port 2: Seagate 160GB NCQ
Port 3: Seagate 160GB "non NCQ"
RAID 0 is setup using 64kb stribe size (the RAID setup is NOT setup as bootable because if I do so it won't boot )

Port 4: Wester Digital 160GB Raid Edition SATA mode.

My motherboard is using BIOS version 1007b2. nForce drivers 6.39 WHQL
NOTHING is overclocked, STOCK as it can get.

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
The problem is that the "interrupts" process which falls under "System Idle" process will hog the CPU raning from 55-75% making the system very unresponsive. The only solution is to reset the PC with the reset button because usually the PC will not get further then the blue log off screen before coming to a total stand still. This problem does NOT occur when not running RAID 0.

PROBLEM OCCURS WHEN:
This is the funny part, I might be doing some browsing, downloads in the background, music playing and then I might just double click on the recycle bin and ZAPP a CPU spike occurs and then only drops down to ranging from 55-75%. System is practically unusable at this point, some process won't start. I can open perhaps Notepad but any control panel will not respond.

I have been testing the drivers that came with the motherboard;
Audio driver version 4.57 (WHQL)
Audio utility version 4.50
Ethernet NRM driver version 4.59 (WHQL) with 4.62 nvtcp.sys
Network management tools version 4.62
SMBus driver version 4.45 (WHQL) with updated uninstaller files
Installer version 4.58
Win2K IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) with 4.74 raidtool
WinXP IDE 2.7 driver version 4.64 (WHQL) with 4.74 raidtool

CURRENT STATUS
I have not been testing these older drivers long enough to verify that the problem does not occur using these drivers, test time only about 24h. However the problem would nearly always happen pretty quickly, usually within 2-3 hours depending on how much desktop multitasking is done.


Please post if you have any ideas or theories.

Thanks for reading,
Simon

 

[T3mplar]

OK I went back to the drivers that came with the Mobo and this problem is gone now.. HOWEVER the board will hang half the time when I use AVI Preview to preview my downloaded movies. Any one heard of this LOL?

Simon

 

[Thorsson]

The problems are possibly down to having NCQ enabled - a known problem. Otherwise I wonder if the non-NCQ drive in the RAID night make it a bit flaky.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

I was also thinking the mix of NCQ and Non-NCQ might be causing issues.

I'm using RAID 0 with 2X WD Raptors on Chaintech VNF4 Ultra, and haven't seen any similar issues, although I'm not sure how to find out which drivers I'm using.

I installed Nforce drivers from NV's website, but I don't see any NVRaid utility, and the device manager says I'm using a microsoft driver even though I specifically had to load NV SATA drivers when I installed windows.

Anyhow, I'd look into the drive mismatch (maybe take one off the array and see what happens), and then go from there.

-D'oh!