IRQ's i dont understand!

The Running Man · 1 Feb 2008 at 19:09

Hi, when i boot up the system before getting into windows it clearly shows that 3 devices, USB, Multimedia Soundcard and SATA all on the same IRQ, however when i check in windows it shows them on separate IRQ's...

is there any reason for this? should i believe the pre boot display or windows?!

i have an audigy 2ZS and sometimes i am getting crackling and in COH if i have sound on ULTRA i get the game freezing up, but now i have set to high quality this does not happen?

also im using Vista 64. 650i SLI mobo etc

Theguy · 1 Feb 2008 at 19:13

IRQ trouble.. hah, havnt had that in a few years. you could always turn off plug and play bios IRQ settings in the bios, to get the bios to sort out irqs.

or change the position of your sound card physicaly.

Burnsy2023 · 1 Feb 2008 at 19:14

Are you actually having any problems?

With APICs you can have more then one device per Master IRQ

Burnsy

RobH · 1 Feb 2008 at 19:17

I haven't played with IRQ's since Windows ME when IRQ sharing did cause problems. I had major problem with my Voodoo 3 sharing IRQ's with my sound card causing it to mess up. If your not actually having problems then ignore it.

BigBoy · 2 Feb 2008 at 10:13

if you take a look in your bios it should show you/tell you what irq's are shared with what.

I.e. pci 1 and pci 2 irq 12
agp and pci 3 irq 15

Something along those lines. what i have always tried to do is split my hardware so that the more dependent systems (GFX Sound card and Nic*) are all on separate IRQ. This is if it is possible.

Have done this since the days of win 3.1 and good old DOS 5 purely for ease with older systems

The Running Man · 2 Feb 2008 at 11:21

well ive had a damn good play and ended up with my display and Serial Bus controller on the same channel but the multimedia device on another one (with IDE, which is disabled in bios?)

if i set IRQ to manual in bios it only lets me assign 3irq's; 5, 10, 11. and they can only be PCI or reserved:/

Burnsy2023 · 2 Feb 2008 at 14:07

Changing IRQs has long been a thing of the past. It's not worth your time changing them, leave them as default

Burnsy

BEn_2600+ · 2 Feb 2008 at 14:14

Say if your graphics card is sharing an IRQ with Chipset, usb or simialr, wont this lower performance?

The Running Man · 2 Feb 2008 at 14:41

tas what im saying but now its "locked" onto no.5 same as my smbus controller and i cant shake it off!

oh yea removing my soundcard results in 4 less devices sharing irq's at boot which is really strange.

Burnsy2023 · 2 Feb 2008 at 15:05

BEn_2600+ said:
Say if your graphics card is sharing an IRQ with Chipset, usb or simialr, wont this lower performance?

By default they don't, so any changes won't make any difference.

Burnsy

oddjob62 · 2 Feb 2008 at 15:36

IRQs are shared amongst devices. In the BIOS you will only see these as the base IRQs (16 in total irrc), but in Windows it creates Virtual IRQs using those "real" IRQs.

So in windows it looks like they all have different IRQs when in reality they are all sharing an IRQ.