ACPI needed?

[Krell]

Could someone tell me please what ACPI does? I've noticed a significant
performance increase if you set windows XP up as a 'Standard PC' and it's
just as functional. Also my hardware each has it's own IRQ. So why does
windows XP default to an ACPI PC?

Thanks.

 

[Kelly]

Some information here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310752&Product=winxp

 

[Krell]

Thanks for that Kelly. Doesn't look like it's really that essential then?

 

[Alex Nichol]

Thanks for that Kelly. Doesn't look like it's really that essential then?

Not really needed on a Desktop machine - the APM level will handle power
off at shutdown, which is the one thing that matters. If you go over
to the non-ACPI setup you will need to go to Power Options, where there
will now be an APM page, and 'Enable APM'

More important on a laptop, to handle say reducing CPU speed as the
battery fades and similar matters.

Don't BTW confuse it with APIC (Advanced Peripheral Interrupt Control)
which is the other newish feature that handles appropriate chipsets
(which have been around a long time) so that you can have more than 15
IRQs