K8N: 40% drop in performance with IDE-driver!!

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

My setup:

Asus K8N
Athlon64 3200+ (2gz)
Kingston HyperX PC4300 1x512 2x256
Creative Ti4200 AGP 64mb
Using Windows XP Pro SP2 UK

The problem is as soon as I install the chipset IDE driver, the DirectX
performance drops by a whooping 40% (measured in 3dMark2001 and UT2004).

So why not just uninstall the IDE-driver you say?
Thing is, when the driver is not present, all 3d apps/games crash/make my pc
reboot within 20 seconds.

This is totally and utterly unacceptable, obviously.

- I upgraded to newest BIOS version (v1004).
- I tried using the IDE driver from an MSi NF250-based motherboard.
- I tried installing latest NVidia ForceWare.
- I tried 4 different Geforce drivers.
- I tried using only one RAM stick.
- I tried using only one HD.
- I tried reinstalling DirectX.
- Formatted and installed Windows like 40 times (took some time to find the
cause of this problem).

I got this Asus board yesterday to replace my old MSi board that had screwed
me over.
I've been working on this problem for 28 consecutive hours now.
So, as you might imagine, I am VERY frustrated.

What can I do? As it is, this pc is useless to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.