Setting up IRQ's in BIOS for winXP Home

noise wrote:
Hi,

Recently bought a new Epox 8RDA+ rev. 1.1 with the NForce2 ST chipset,
Athlon XP 2600+ and some PC3200 RAM (single 256MB for now, will get
2x something really fast later). Everything's working beautifully and
I'm able to overclock the FSB to 200 so that RAM and CPU are synch.
at 400Mhz... which is a bonus as AFAIK this chipset is really only
rated for 333.

Anyway, I read briefly somewhere that somehow you should disable the
ability to use additional IRQ's and then install XP clean, because
if you don't there is a performance loss.

Can someone please explain to me how to do this, and why (or if) this
is the case? I will get a new HDD soon and this would be a good opp-
ortunity for a clean install - since tinkering with XP I've changed
a lot of stuff learning about this OS and would now like to set it
up fresh for max. performance, esp. for games and 3d Studio Max 4.2

I thought that PC's still had a total of 16 IRQ's, is it a special
feature of the chipset that more can be available, or is it done by
sharing the "old" IRQ's and assigning them "fake" new numbers?


The extra IRQs are a result of APIC being enabled by default in your
motherboard BIOS. If it's functioning well, resist the urge to tweak. If you
want to do anything, disable any devices or ports you don't require via the
BIOS.

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Thanks for this.
According to the board manual, the APIC is something that applies to
Intel CPU's in SMP systems - weird then that if I disable the APIC, my
system won't boot. Sounds like something's not quite right in the manual
I suppose.
Things are functioning very well so I'm happy enough - if the system
won't boot by turning off this feature then obviously it's not an option.
So is this the only way to control those IRQ's?

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"S.Heenan" wrote in message
news
The extra IRQs are a result of APIC being enabled by default in your
motherboard BIOS. If it's functioning well, resist the urge to tweak. If
you
want to do anything, disable any devices or ports you don't require via
the
BIOS.

--
Winerr 00B - Push Error; Removing Files to Make Room for Advertisement

noise wrote:
Thanks for this.
According to the board manual, the APIC is something that applies to
Intel CPU's in SMP systems - weird then that if I disable the APIC, my
system won't boot. Sounds like something's not quite right in the
manual I suppose.
Things are functioning very well so I'm happy enough - if the system
won't boot by turning off this feature then obviously it's not an
option. So is this the only way to control those IRQ's?


APIC isn't explained very well in most motherboard manuals. Changing from
PIC to ACIP will always prevent the PC from booting. The ability to steer
IRQs was more important with the older operating systems like
Win95/98/98SE/ME. If you really feel the need, go ahead and install the
Standard HAL as detailed in the second link below.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314068

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;299340

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"S.Heenan" wrote in message
. ca...

APIC isn't explained very well in most motherboard manuals. Changing from
PIC to ACIP will always prevent the PC from booting. The ability to steer
IRQs was more important with the older operating systems like
Win95/98/98SE/ME. If you really feel the need, go ahead and install the
Standard HAL as detailed in the second link below.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314068

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;299340

Thanks again for an informative reply.
noisey

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