Virtual IRQs and BIOS settings...

[GD]

Hi,

I recently emailed Matrox tech support about that problem I had with my sound card's drivers. It seems like there is no solution but the guy with whom I spoke explained to me that virtual IRQ thing Windows 2000 is using...

Here's what he said:

Your system is using Virtual IRQ's. Hence the 128, 48, and the 31. A system only has 15 IRQ's and by using virtual IRQ's can hender system performance and cause many different problems. Please make sure that in the bios of your motherboard you have Assign IRQ to VGA and PNP OS set to disable. If your motherboard allows it you can also set IRQ's to certain PCI slots and see if that alters there IRQ's.

Do you think that disabling this thing could help me with my 850 (yes 850) score under 3D mark?

Moreover I saw these settings in my (very conservative) AMIBIOS:

BX MASTER LATENCY TIMER 64
MULTI TRANS TIMER 32
AGP MULTI-TRANS TIMER 32
AGP LOW PRIORITY TIMER 16

Could anyone explain what these numbers refer to? Should I change any one of them, would that result in any performance gains?

Anyway this "virtual" thing with Win2k is really starting to get on me nerves! Virtual IRQs Vitual desktop... I wonder whether microsoft will accept virtual money as well for its future products...

Thanks!
GD

[This message has been edited by GD (edited 19 July 2000).]

[Greebe]

It would help if you would share with us what hardware you have.

[Rick]

Win2000 stuck my G400, SBLive and NIC on IRQ9. Unfortunately the only way to fix this is to reinstall Windows, MS has a long technical reason why we can't change IRQs manually. Having said that, I'm not having any trouble. The OS seems to be handling all the cards just fine and with the memory management it has, I just love this OS.

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ASUS P3V4X,Celeron 366@555, 2.25v, 128mb PC133 Crucial RAM, G400 DH, Maxtor 7200rpm 10GB, 4.3GB Fujistu, Creative 24x, Creative X-Gamer, D-Link NIC, ISA Modem

[Gurm]

People, you need to learn to do a search of the fori.

The "virtual IRQ"'s, and "forced IRQ"'s are NORMAL and GOOD. It's part of ACPI. It just works. Don't complain, it's BETTER (for most people, with good hardware).

If you're still having problems, reinstalling in non-ACPI mode will seldom help. Try identifying the underlying cause of the problem instead of assuming it's Microsoft's fault.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[GD]

Hello!

Thanks for the feedback everyone!!

Sorry Greebe. Config can be found now at this post's sigature.

Gurm

I knew nothing about virtual IRQs before contacting matrox tech support. They told me it's bad :-). Who should I believe?

Anyway can anyone explain what these BIOS settings mean?

Cya all!

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PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.