I don't use ATI, but those new ATI drivers are known to be buggy. They tend to use several months to mature :rolleyes:.
If the first Catalyst drivers works on your MB, then it is probably a buggy driver, and not related to the MB. Maybe you need to find a "working" new driver?.
My Vertex has been working just fine when i tried it with AHCI, RAID and IDE-mode.
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EDIT: Still testing, but all my previews profiles seams to be working just fine with BIOS F4 :)
A quick
wPrime 32M 219x21