IRQ issues with Creative Audigy 4?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gary
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Gary

Am contemplating upgrading to the Audigy 4 soundcard, am currently using an
old Creative Live 1024. The latter tends to stutter and clicks under Win2k
and Abit KR7a MB, which appears to be an IRQ sharing problem which I've been
unable to resolve.
I'd like to know if the Audigy 4 PCI boards are now much more tolerant than
the old Soundblaster cards when it comes to IRQ sharing, do they still
insist on IRQ5 to themselves?

TIA
Gary
 
Gary said:
I'd like to know if the Audigy 4 PCI boards are now much more tolerant than
the old Soundblaster cards when it comes to IRQ sharing, do they still
insist on IRQ5 to themselves?
Click to expand...

PCI cards can't insist on an IRQ, they can't even request one. The BIOS
and/or operating system chooses an IRQ from whatever set of IRQs that
the motherboard allows for a card in that slot. The simplest way to
change the IRQ of a PCI card is often to put the card in another slot.
You can sometimes affect what IRQ gets choose by playing around with
BIOS setting or by using the Device Manager in Windows for force the
card to use a certain IRQ.

Getting a new soundcard isn't likely to change what IRQ is used, but it
might solve the stuttering problems for other reasons.

Ross Ridge
 
Go into the bios and turn off anything you do not use
like parallel and serial ports.
It will free up some IRQs.

I heard that the new Creative Labs X-Fi sound card can be a cheap as $80 for
OEM.
Or Audigy 2 value for $45.
 
PCI cards can't insist on an IRQ, they can't even request one.
Okay, for "insist" read: "unless they're using IRQ5 by itself, then you'll
almost certainly encounter problems"... ;-)

I'm aware of how IRQ allocation works and how to free up IRQs, my question
was as to whether the later Creative cards, such as the Audigy 4, are less
prone to such problems as their predecessors. I cross-posted to the Win2k NG
because I thought that might throw up more relevant replies.

Regards
Gary
 
Gary said:
Okay, for "insist" read: "unless they're using IRQ5 by itself, then you'll
almost certainly encounter problems"... ;-)
Click to expand...

While there's all sort of reasons why sharing interrupts can cause
problems, I've never heard of it actually mattering what IRQ number
a PCI card is assigned. However, even sharing interrupts is far from
certain to cause problems these days.
I'm aware of how IRQ allocation works and how to free up IRQs, my question
was as to whether the later Creative cards, such as the Audigy 4, are less
prone to such problems as their predecessors.
Click to expand...

Presumably the newer cards would have a newer drivers which would be less
likely to have bugs related to interrupt sharing, but that won't help
you if your problem is caused by bugs in your BIOS, operating system,
or motherboard.

Ross Ridge
 
I believe the IRQ sharing problem has been resolved with newer operating
systems (like Win XP).
and newer designs in bios (newer motherboards).
So I would say to hold off on a new sound card until you are ready to
get a new motherboard and use Win XP.
And yes, new sound cards are better at using different IRQ.

What are the reasons for switching to an Audigy 4?

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz's sound card will have less problems then a Creative
labs 1024 or Live card.
And you can get a used Santa Cruz off EBay for less then $20.
 
tod said:
I believe the IRQ sharing problem has been resolved with newer operating
systems (like Win XP).
and newer designs in bios (newer motherboards).
So I would say to hold off on a new sound card until you are ready to
get a new motherboard and use Win XP.
And yes, new sound cards are better at using different IRQ.
Click to expand...

The stuttering I get is the same in XP. I thought XP was dreadful, hence I
use Win2k. Note that I didn't get the problem when using Win98, using the
same motherboard (Abit KR7A)

What are the reasons for switching to an Audigy 4?
Click to expand...

I require a fairly high spec audio section (good SNR and low distortion),
along with optical/firewire ports, low latency MIDI and good performance
with games. Therefore the Audigy 4 is a reasonable compromise.
 
FWIW, the NT operating system is more demanding on the hardware than the
DOS based Windows variants, and use completely different drivers. You
can try moving the card to a different slot so as to not use the same
PCI interrupt as another high demand piece of hardware.(read AGP card).
The SW IRQ's are only for legacy support and have nothing to do with the
hardware PCI interrupts (A,B,C and D).
 
Go into the bios and turn off anything you do not use
like parallel and serial ports.
It will free up some IRQs.
Click to expand...

Even if you free up IRQ's many PCI devices won't use them anyway. I've
disabled serial and parallel ports and none of my hardware uses them.
On XP it doesn't matter anyway as the OS assigns IRQ's and sharing is
no problem. I've been told that XP doesn't use IRQ's (even though they
are listed). What's important is that devices don't share memory
address space.
 
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