SATA on Southbridge + Athlon XP?

[RevMen]

I recently learned the hard (expensive) way that a SATA drive connected to my Epox 8RDA3+ does not work for audio recording, which is my machine's primary function (apart from gaming, of course ). Audio played from or recorded to sounds awful, because it can't get a proper data stream going.

After some reading I discovered that my woes originate in the SATA controller being added onto the PCI bus, as opposed to having its own path to the southbridge. There is some extensive tweaking I can do to get it to work right, but I'd rather just get a new motherboard that's connected properly and not have to worry about it.

I have a Barton processor which I'd rather not replace if I don't have to, so I've been looking over many motherboards for one that has a properly integrated SATA connector and supports Athlon XP's.

I've not had any luck finding one. Does anyone know of any boards that can help me? Am I going to have to switch over to Intel, or go up to an Athlon 64?

EDIT:

An afternoon spent reading (instead of doing homework) has led me to the understanding that the only Athlon XP type southbridge that provides native SATA support is VIA's VT8237, which can be found beside the KT600 and the new KT880.

Now, to find the best KT600 board, as I don't have the patience to wait for the KT880.

 

[Master [H]]

MSI and Soltek's KT600 boards are supposed to be some of the better ones last I read up on.

 

[uwackme]

How can it not be fast enough but the IDE controller...also on the PCI bus is?

Perhaps RAID0 would be fast enough....Im getting 85MB/s average transfer rate from 2 Maxtor 80G 8MB drives in sata raid0 on an NF7-S. 2 Raptors get over 100MB/s on same.

While you are at it...up AGP speed to 80Mhz...so PCI bus is 40Mhz instead of 33.

 

[RevMen]

I guess the problem so much isn't the available speed, but it's a matter of PCI latency settings. For most applications, where a very steady, high data rate isn't such an issue, the controller works just fine on the IDE bus. Multitracking raw audio data requires a particularly constant data stream, so stops and starts to make room for sound cards (also doing a lot of work doing the process) can make things get sloppy.

If you're interested, I found a post in the Cakewalk forums that explains it better than I can. He also explains how to fix the problem by adjusting PCI latency settings, something I just don't feel like messing with.