Jure Pečar wrote: > On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 19:04:53 -0500 > Peter Arremann <loony at loonybin.org> wrote: > > >> - nothing helped. Whenever I had high IO loads the system would crash. >> Eventually disabling write cache reduced the IO enough for the system to be >> stable. >> > > I've heard that from many different sources now - it really looks like certain 3wares and tyans don't like eachother. > It's the motherboard. The bios has some "issues" and it seems to gobble up an ungodly amount of option rom memory space. Tyan blames nvidia...blah blah blah...So boards like the 9550 and other RAID controllers get "crowded out" leading to unpredictable performance issues. You can try freeing more some more option rom space. Go to the bios menu and in Advanced\Intergrated Device\Mac Opt scan set to (disabled). Also, disable the nvidia onboard raid controller. If you've got a pci-e video card, that can also hog a lot of option rom space. I had an issue with my RAID card being recognized at all until I did some of the above and finally got it to the point where things were recognized enough to update everyone's firmware. Now it all plays nicely together. Lastly, Tyan's tech support was an absolute nightmare to deal with. The highpoint people were pleasant, quick to respond, and very helpful. I've also had very pleasant experiences with 3Ware so perhaps they might be able to help with the performance issues with their board and this motherboard. Cheers,