How to change IRQ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Honjo
  • Start date Start date
H

Honjo

Video card vendor told me that I have to change IRQ either for the video
card or the NIC(onboard) in order to solve the problem of sluggish
performance of the video card. These devices are presently sharing IRQ
16. Now, how can I change IRQ?

Kaz
 
Well, that all depends. View the device in Device Manager and go to the
Resources tab. Deselect 'Use Automatic Settings" and then see if it allows
you to manually change it. Depending on the device and the driver you may
or may not be able to do so. Depending on your motherboard you may also be
able to set it in the BIOS. I couldn't really tell you how to do that
specifically but if you look you'll probably find it.

--
J.C. Hornbeck, MCSE
Microsoft Product Support

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J.C. Hornbeck said:
Well, that all depends. View the device in Device Manager and go to
the Resources tab. Deselect 'Use Automatic Settings" and then see if
it allows you to manually change it. Depending on the device and the
driver you may or may not be able to do so. Depending on your
motherboard you may also be able to set it in the BIOS. I couldn't
really tell you how to do that specifically but if you look you'll
probably find it.
Click to expand...

You don't think that the ACPI kernal that XP may be using is a factor?
 
Hornbeck,

Thanks for your response.
I am having difficulty following your instruction: There is no "tab" on the
Device Manager. View includes "Resources by type" and "Resources by connection"
in its pull-down menu. I could not find "Use Automatic Settings". I would
appreciate your further assistance.

Kaz
 
Hi, Kaz.

As J. C. said, it all depends. With many mainboards, the only way to change
IRQs is to open the computer case and physically move the PSI card(s) to a
different slot. If you don't have a GOOD mainboard manual, you may be in
for a lot of trial and error.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
 
In Windows XP, Device Manager may list some or all of the devices on your ACPI motherboard as using the same IRQ (IRQ 9). (To view the list of resources, click either Resources by type or Resources by connection on the View menu). No option is available to change the IRQ setting. Windows takes advantage of the ACPI features of the motherboard, including advanced PCI sharing. The PCI bus uses IRQ 9 for IRQ steering. This feature lets you add more devices without generating IRQ conflicts.
 
Hi, R.C. White:

As indicated in my original post, it is not feasible to change slot for either
one of these devices because the NIC is an onboard device and the video card
uses AGP slot. Does this mean I am out of luck?

Kaz
 
Hi, Byte:

Do you agree or not to that a video card should not share an IRQ with any other device in order for it to run at its maximum possible speed?

Kaz
 
Well, contrary to what the product vender's tech support says, my experiment
points to that you are right: I unistalled the onboard NIC(not physically) so
that the video card no longer shares IRQ with any other device but the problem
remains unchanged. I would think the vendor includes the demo video files in
the product package to demonstrate good performance not poor performance of the
product. So, it is puzzling to me. Is replacing it with higher price video
card only solution?

Kaz
 
Yes. Honjo should check the BIOS setup to see if the onboard NIC can be
assigned its own exclusive IRQ.
 
Honjo said:
As indicated in my original post, it is not feasible to change slot for either
one of these devices because the NIC is an onboard device and the video card
uses AGP slot. Does this mean I am out of luck?
Click to expand...


You could try experimentally disabling the NIC and seeing if the video
speed builds up. Before doing this though, make a backup copy of the
activation files, windows\system32\wpa.dbl and wpa.bak so you could
boot to Safe mode and restore them after re-enabling it. Otherwise you
may lose valuable votes in the activation stakes.

I think the vendor is trying a fast one. A modern inbuilt NIC and AGP
card should be perfectly happy to share an IRQ. In XP they are at last
queues - so the next need to arise in the queue does not have to wait
until the driver fro the previous item has finished its work
 
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