Slot and IRQ question,P4S8X again....

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ironwolf61
  • Start date Start date
I

Ironwolf61

After having this motherboard for about 6 months, the On board LAN
started to crap out. Had to replace it with an ol trusty Linksys 100
NIC. I had to replace my sound with an Audigy 2 almost 3 months
prior due to lousy playback and distortion cropping up....Placed
the Audigy in slot 3... The Linksys NIC is now in slot 5....Question
is, what is the best Slot/IRQ for my system to be stable...Also after
installing the NIC and Bios and Win XP config; I've got 4 devices
hogging IRQ 11... Look below.....


IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 3 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 3 SiS PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller OK
IRQ 4 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 11 RADEON 9500 OK
IRQ 11 Creative SB Audigy OK
IRQ 11 Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter(LNE100TX v4) OK
IRQ 11 WinXP Promise FastTrak 376 (tm) Controller OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK


Running XP Pro

Intel 2.8 Proc

512 Meg Ram

160 Gig (Raid 0 , 2 - 80Gigs ) HD

Radeon 9500, Audigy 2, Linksys 100TX NIC....

I have been seeing slow screen refreshes; due to the tied up IRQ 11???
Tried to move the IRQ's but they( the 4 sharing IRQ 11) all tend to
move together....

Help....

Ironwolf61.....
 
Ironwolf61 said:
After having this motherboard for about 6 months, the On board LAN
started to crap out. Had to replace it with an ol trusty Linksys 100
NIC. I had to replace my sound with an Audigy 2 almost 3 months
prior due to lousy playback and distortion cropping up....Placed
the Audigy in slot 3... The Linksys NIC is now in slot 5....Question
is, what is the best Slot/IRQ for my system to be stable...Also after
installing the NIC and Bios and Win XP config; I've got 4 devices
hogging IRQ 11... Look below.....
Click to expand...
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 3 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 3 SiS PCI to USB Enhanced Host Controller OK
IRQ 4 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 SiS 7001 PCI to USB Open Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 11 RADEON 9500 OK
IRQ 11 Creative SB Audigy OK
IRQ 11 Linksys LNE100TX Fast Ethernet Adapter(LNE100TX v4) OK
IRQ 11 WinXP Promise FastTrak 376 (tm) Controller OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK


Running XP Pro

Intel 2.8 Proc

512 Meg Ram

160 Gig (Raid 0 , 2 - 80Gigs ) HD

Radeon 9500, Audigy 2, Linksys 100TX NIC....

I have been seeing slow screen refreshes; due to the tied up IRQ 11???
Tried to move the IRQ's but they( the 4 sharing IRQ 11) all tend to
move together....

Help....

Ironwolf61.....
Click to expand...

Onboard Peripherals:
Promise 20376 Ultra IDE Controller
Realtek Firewire Controller
(LAN controller in chipset, PHY layer separate Realtek chip)

AGP Radeon 9500
Slot1
Slot2
Slot3 Audigy
Slot4
Slot5 Linksys NIC
Slot6

Based on the IRQ table in the manual, you could put the Audigy in
Slot3, if the onboard audio is disabled. You could also put the Audigy
in Slot5, as the physical interrupt signal on that slot is definitely
not shared. You probably have the onboard audio disabled now anyway,
so just leave your cards.

You can also stick the Audigy in Slot2, if you promise not to populate
Slot6 with a PCI card. Those two slots share with one another, so
leaving one slot of the pair blank, makes the other slot unique.

Something else you might want to check, is the setting of the
BIOS "Plug & Play O/S". Setting it to [No] means the BIOS gets
first crack at assigning IRQs. Basically the OS consults a BIOS
table when you do this. If, on the other hand you select [Yes],
the BIOS table only gets to assign a subset of stuff, and the
OS does the rest. Judging by your observation they are all hogging
IRQ 11, I would say the BIOS is set to [Yes] right now. I would
try the other setting and see if the assignments are a little more
unique.

Also, since your listing shows 16 entries, this is symptomatic
of a non-ACPI OS install. If you do an ACPI install, then you
will get 24 IRQs, and the plugin PCI cards tend to occupy 16-24.
Whether this will work or not depends on whether ACPI support in
the BIOS is busted or not. On one of my motherboards, a couple of
BIOS releases had this broken, forcing me to use a non-ACPI HAL
(hardware abstraction layer) during OS install. You'll know you
have non-ACPI, because you have to switch off the PC manually,
as shutdown won't work properly.

As I'm really no expert on interrupt strategies, I would try the
Plug & Play thing first. The BIOS should try to implement the
table shown in the manual, complete with moving the Audigy to IRQ5
priority 13 as the "sound card".

Someone tried to educate me once - his post is here. It looks
like an excellent recipe, but since I _never_ reinstall an OS
once it has been installed, I've never had an opportunity to try
it. I may get to do that on my next build, coming soon :-)

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=n...F-8&[email protected]&rnum=2

HTH,
Paul
 
Back
Top