[FalloutYear]

Hello,

I've heard things about IRQ's and how they can be sharing or something like that. I was wondering what IRQ's I should reserve in BIOS. Currently I'm interested in reserving or not allowing to share IRQs for my Sound Card and Graphics Card. My sound device (SB X-Fi Xtreme Music) is using IRQ #17 and my video card is using IRQ #16. Should I worry about all this IRQ stuff? I'm trying to make my system perform at her best.

Thanks,
Matt

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I should reserve none of them and let the BIOS decide what is best IRQ-wise for each device. Reserving any makes it hard to add later hardware which may have nowhere to fit IRQ-wise. Plus Windows is pretty adament that if it wants IRQ7 for something, it's going to hang on to IRQ7 for that device for all its worth and takes a lot of effort to convince it otherwise.

IRQ sharing is a fact of life these days; so many devices and not enough IRQ numbers to go round. The only way round it is for somebody to basically redesign the entire original IBM specification of 1981 and make it backwards compatible as well. Which isn't going to happen any time soon now we have IRQ-sharing.

[Neil Jones]

I should reserve none of them and let the BIOS decide what is best IRQ-wise for each device. Reserving any makes it hard to add later hardware which may have nowhere to fit IRQ-wise. Plus Windows is pretty adament that if it wants IRQ7 for something, it's going to hang on to IRQ7 for that device for all its worth and takes a lot of effort to convince it otherwise.

IRQ sharing is a fact of life these days; so many devices and not enough IRQ numbers to go round. The only way round it is for somebody to basically redesign the entire original IBM specification of 1981 and make it backwards compatible as well. Which isn't going to happen any time soon now we have IRQ-sharing.