Changing IRQ's is it neccessary?

[Busie23]

I just put a new machine together and noticed that I have about 5 devices on IRQ 11. Everything is running fine with exception to playing any video games that have a lot of sound. Both the sound and game play get all choppy, etc. I have a Turtle beach santa cruz sound card and an ATI 7000 vid card, in a epox 8k7a with an Athlon xp 1600 chip. Thunderbird. Both are on the same channel and I'm guessing that this is causing the problem as both these items were in my old machine with a slower processor, and were running fine. Any help is appreciated!

Thanks.

Sean

 

[ant80]

DO NOT CHANGE THE IRQ'S UNTIL U KNOW THAT IS THE PROBLEM. IF U SCREW IT UP, U COULD END UP HAVING TO REINSTALL THE OS, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS WINDOWS.

Even if u know it is an irq problem, try upgrading the bios.

can u tell me what pci slot the sound card is on, and what other slots u r using for other cards, network, modem, tv tuner, if any, etc?

ur choppiness is probably caused by some other factor. Only in the original kt133 chipset was there an irq problem, which is solved by a bios upgrade.

 

[sechs]

If you're using a Windows NT OS (like Win2k or XP), then there's no reason to change IRQ assignments, as the operating system virtualizes them all.

If you're using a Windows 9x OS, then there is probably enough reason to attempt to limit the number of devices sharing IRQs. If this is the case, get back to us with what devices are on each IRQ.

 

[Busie23]

Here you go fellas..

I'm running windows 98se, 40 gb maxtor 7200, athlon xp 1600, 256 crucial ram, on an epox 8k7a board. I have a lite on 32x12x40 burner, along with a cd-rom, and floppy. I have an ATI 7000 in the AGP slot, followed by an open #1 pci slot. In pci #2 I have my santa cruz tutle beach, slot three is the SMC 1244 NIC, slot four is open, slot five has my 56k modem, and slot six is open.

Is there a secret formula for knowing which slots to put what or is there someway to tell what to put where?

Thanks,

Sean

EDIT: I moved the sound card from #2 to #6, and rebooted. There are now 6 devices on channel 11. Here is a pic of the device listings: Screen shot of devices.

I rebooted again after resetting the bios and there were still 6 on channel 11. Alos, i mine as well mention that I'm using a flat panel monitor, just in case that makes a difference.


EDIT#2
I just disabled AC97 audio and onboard legacy audio in bios. Now the device screen shows this listing,l but thegameplay is still super choppy. The game I was using to test everything out was Space cadet pinball which really shouldn't be that hard on the pc? I'm almost afraid to see what Half-life would do if I fired it up.

 

[Busie23]

I removed the santa cruz card and it plays fine. I'm going to see how it plays with the onboard sound enabled, and if that works fine, then I will look for some updated santa cruz drivers.

EDIT:

Ok, I found an updated driver on the santa cruz site and ran that all seems good now. My question now is what is the difference between the vxm and wdm(or something close to these two) sound drivers? The updated driver was a "beta for win98se". I guess I'm just curious as to what the differences are.

Sean

 

[SigEp502]

I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you update to Windows XP. XP is a great OS for hardware support/management. If you have enough memory to push XP, I don't see any reason not to upgrade. I know this is obvious, but I have been very happy with XP's performance and it will solve most of your driver issues; especially with manufacturers spending more time on XP driver development now.