Changing IRQ assignments?

I have just made a new system using a GA-7VT600L mb and a 2600 Barton CPU. The mb has onboard lan and sound which I am using as well. (also running 512mb PC3000, GFX 5200)

The problem here is that when playing a certain game online the PC will be fine for awhile then all of a sudden freeze. I sent in a CS ticket to the game manufacturer and a rep has been going over every driver file and all the basics with me for 48 hours now (with no luck). The rep did notice that IRQ 11 is assigned to both the AC97 sound and the RealTek onboard LAN. He said that this could be the problem and that I should really put these two devices on seperate IRQ's.

Now the question becomes does this seem reasonable and how would I go about doing that?

It's not uncommon for devices to share IRQs. What OS are you running.

i dont see how a conflict with onboard lan and audio would make you freeze in online games...

anyways, its not that much of a problem in most cases to share IRQ's, unless they are major components of your system

Gimps said:

I have just made a new system using a GA-7VT600L mb and a 2600 Barton CPU. The mb has onboard lan and sound which I am using as well. (also running 512mb PC3000, GFX 5200)

The problem here is that when playing a certain game online the PC will be fine for awhile then all of a sudden freeze. I sent in a CS ticket to the game manufacturer and a rep has been going over every driver file and all the basics with me for 48 hours now (with no luck). The rep did notice that IRQ 11 is assigned to both the AC97 sound and the RealTek onboard LAN. He said that this could be the problem and that I should really put these two devices on seperate IRQ's.

Now the question becomes does this seem reasonable and how would I go about doing that?

Click to expand...

Yes That sounds reasonable. There may be a contention between the devices while playing an online Game. Between the sound card and the LAN card, there's a lot of Data being moved around.

Since the Onboard Sound and Lan are using an IRQ that you can't change, the easy thing to do would be to get a NIC card or sound card and disable the onboard device. Then you the can put the Card in any PCI slot that doesn't share that same IRQ. Might be hard to find an unused IRQ. It will prob. end up sharing with something else, But that may be better than what's happening now.

The other thing You might try is playing with increasing the PCI Latency Timing. Giving each device a larger slice of PCI Bus time may cure the problem. Powerstrip lets you set each PCI devices' PCI Latency seperately. You might try giving the sound card 128 clocks, and the LAN card 80.(Or Vice versa, You may have to experiment a little) The default PCI Latency Time is 32 clocks.

also, try looking around in your bios for something that gives you more IRQ spots. i forgot wut its called, but i have something in my bios that opens up more IRQ spots

if you have anything integrated into your mobo that you dont use, disable it