I'm actually quite miffed about this issue. Even with a clean install of Windows 8 and AHCI set for my drives, whenever the latest "Windows 8" compatible chipset drivers are installed is kills any chance of booting my system. It get's stuck on the Windows 8 boot screen, with the ciruclar loading animaiont going for more than an hour before i gave up.I"m running a GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 with the latest BIOS. WD Black hard drives and a installation of Windows 8 64-bit. The only way to get the machine to boot is the change the controller to IDE mode, and then i'll be able to boot into Windows 8. Or restore my backup image of the computers C: drive.I hope something can be done about this, or let me know how i can help solve this issue or provide some logs that can clear things up.

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I had the same problem since day 1 with my gigabyte mobo. Resolved to use ide mode, and coupled with an SSD it's still amazingly fast.

OTOH, I hope you come up with a solution as I was looking at that mobo for my next upgrade.

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#1: Phenom II C2 955BE @ 3.6, Antec Kuhler 920, Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5, Asus 5870/V2, ASUS Xonar D2X, 4 x 1gig OCZ2N1066SR2GK @800, Antec Truepower New 750, Arc Midi, Win8pro x64 upgrade
#2: Athlon 64 X2 4200+, AGP 1950pro, Audigy 2, Asus A8V-D, 2gig ram,  Enermax 465P, Antec900. Now on Win8pro cat 10.2

Really odd.  You might be able to find some information on the thread I linked below.

Sean's Windows 8 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs

Please let us know if there is something in there that corrects the issue.

FYI, here is the Win7 link...

Sean's Windows 7 Install & Optimization Guide for SSDs & HDDs

Edit:

Also see here: http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=454&threadid=161879 

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The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

Edited: 10/31/2012 at 12:14 PM by Canis-X

Thanks for the links Canis-X. Unfortunately i haven't found a solution to the problem and with a little research i've noticed a couple other people having similar issues (scattered around the net).

While I would love to use AMD’s drivers when I have AHCI enabled, in the end the Microsoft drivers to the job. when I do reinstall windows 8 in the future, i'll try pre-loading the AMD drivers before the install.

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Well, your PC probably isn't "dead". I am also having this same issue. The problem seems to be with the "amdsbs.sys" driver, when you have RAID+AHCI on an AMD 7xx, 8xx, or 9xx chipset.

I have an Asus motherboard with the 890 chipset. I have one SSD drive for Windows boot, and a RAID 0 array for storage drives. When I set it in the BIOS to run in RAID+AHCI mode, Windows 8 bluescreens with the "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_EQUAL" (or something similar) message. The only way I can get it to work is by changing the BIOS to RAID+IDE combo mode, which affects the performance of the SSD drive.

And it seems to be a common issue, that has been around since Windows 8 beta:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/windows-8-error-amdsbssys/d500372a-56f4-45eb-aaf2-16e8e9caa16etm=1352653331661

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/W8ITProPreRel/thread/b716774f-20c9-463b-857e-e84d2231a06d

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/nl/w8itproinstall/thread/d0ee9d94-7452-4be8-aeaa-667557b1abe4

 Even people with new PC's:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-hardware/driverirqlnotlessorequal-amdsbssys/14f7bf99-7791-458b-bf45-a2b58b054218?page=2

One of the odd things is that the AMD 12.10 chipset driver package is missing the "AHCI" folder in "\Drivers\SBDrv\SB8xx\". There is one in SB7xx, but Windows 8 doesn't accept that driver.

It looks to me like the 12.10 drivers are NOT compatible with Windows 8.

 

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Edited: 11/11/2012 at 12:30 PM by Soylent

My setup is somewhat simular (but I'm ussing SSDs in a Raid 0 array) and I have no issues at all with AHCI enabled. However on the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 you should enable the "Raid 5" option even if you are NOT using Raid 5 because on GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 it enables full SATA/AHCI functionality on the board for some crazy reason?

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AMD FX 8350
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 AM3 (AMD 990FX chipset)
Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866 (Timings:8-8-8-24-T1)
2 x Diamond Radeon HD 7970's (CrossFire Mode)
AMD HDMI sound (via Radeon HD 7970)
Display: 73" Mitsubishi 73838 3DTV
Primary Drive: OCZ Agility 3 SSD (2*480GB) in Raid 0 (SATA 3 mode)
Secoundary Drives: 5 (SATA 3) Drives total 10 Tera Bytes Secondary Storage

Same issue on SB750 chipset on Win8 X64 on Asus M3A79T Deluxe mthb. Bsod after installing AHCI driver. Also on a fresh install you can add inf file to the Windows 8 setup partition utility: it will recognize the driver but it will find no disk available.

Default Microsoft driver has no issue and good perfomances.

 

I can verify this...  I was baffled as to why my 2xMushkin Chronos 60GB RAID0 was being capped at 500MB/s in ATTO and it was only after I enabled the RAID5 option in the BIOS that I finally got my full speeds in ATTO...  very very odd.  BTW, I also had to do a fresh install since I could not boot into Windows after RAID5 was enabled (even though I do not use RAID5)...  but all is good now

 

QB

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The MONSTER HTPC:

CPU: AMD FX-8350.||.Cooler: Corsair H80i
MB: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7.||.RAM: 8 GB Mushkin Blackline DDR3 2000MHz (7-10-8-27-1T)
Case: CoolerMaster HAF 932.||.PSU: Corsair HX750
GPU:HIS IceQ 5 Radeon HD 5770 Turbo 1GB.||.Audio: Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro w/ Logitech Z-5300e (5.1, 280W-RMS)
Drive: 2xMushkin Chronos 60GB RAID0.||.Storage: 6TB (4x500GB Caviar Black RAID0, 2TB Hitachi & 2TB Caviar Green)

Some Issues here aswell,

 

I have a 990fxa-ud3, after installing windows 8 I proceeded to install the AMD chipset drivers. After the SATA AHCI driver was installed I would get random hangs when loading anything (OS included). However the biggest problem came after resuming from sleep. The system would crash and not respond for a matter of minutes until a bluescreen with a "DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE" error and continue to reboot.

 

After a little deductive reasoning, I proceeded to role back the "Sata AHCI controller" driver the default MS used to initailly install the OS.

This has solved my problem for now and the system is fuction properly (with AHCI, which is important to me for TRIM).

 

All of this to basicly fortify the knowledge that the AMD SATA AHCI driver does not function correctly in windows 8.

 

Thank you.