At my wits end, 6800GT & Virtual IRQ Assignment w/ Forceware 7xxx Drivers

[Icefury]

Ok, here's the situation. Fresh load of Windows XP Pro (32 bit version) on a Asus A8N-SLI (AMD Nforce 4) motherboard. Windows does a good job of spreading out the IRQ's closely resembling bios values. When I install the Forceware 76.45 drivers, it takes my GT6800 off of IRQ 5 and moves it to a virtual IRQ of 18. Keep in mind, NO chipset drivers have been installed. Any idea WHY the video card drivers place (screw up) a perfectly good IRQ spread and make a virtual IRQ (cuasing game crashing problems for me, verified widespread issue with all of the 7xxx drivers from BFG 2 level tech support). Has anyone else run into this problem and is there any way (other than killing ACPI in windows install and doing a standard pc setup) to prevent this all wrong hijacking and mismanagament of my video card IRQ?

To further add, Roughly 10% of every call that BFG recieves is directly realted to the problem of Virtual IRQ assignment and how games choke on it. Thats saying alot considering the vast majority of their callers are non tech people who need hand holding for everything. I've built countless systems and worked in IT for 9 years so I'd like to think I know what I'm doing. If I dont get some sort of resolution that does not involve removing ACPI from windows all together, Im just gonna sell my 6800GT and get an ATI. As it stands, I have a $400 card that is useless.

Any feedback would be greatly apperciated!

Processor:
AMD 64 3200+ Venice
Operating System:
Windows XP Pro SP2
Mobo:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe 1010 bios
RAM:
2x 512 PC4000 Geil Platinum
Video:
BFG 6800GT PCI-E (latest bios)
Storage:
2x Samsung SATA 150 Spinpoint (Raid 0)
Audio:
Audigy 2 ZS, Logitech 5300 5.1
Power:
Rosewill 550 Power Supply (rails/voltage are rock solid)

PNP OS set to NO. Nothing on my system is overclocked. Prime 95 (24 hrs) zero errors, Memtest (24 hrs) zero errors. No sharing IRQ's at all. PC uses an aluminum server case with 6 fans, temp inside case never reaches above 100 degrees, cpu under full load 43 celius. Multiple versions of Forceware drivers have been tried and all move video card to a virtual IRQ assignment.

 

[Kogan]

Does something else use irq 18?

Anyhow, I haven't had an irq conflict since windows 98. Here's my bios setup:
ACPI: on
P&P OS: yes
irq resources controlled by: auto
Assign IRQ for VGA: yes
All com ports/serial ports/floppy port/ide port/onboard devices disabled (devices I don't use)

I searched around a bit and it looks like there is no way to change your irq's manually with ACPI on. I have a geforce 6800 that assigns itself to irq 19 that works fine.

How long have you been having this problem anyway? Since you got the video card?

Hope you figure something out or someone else has some good input.

 

[Kogan]

This may be worth a try..
Here's a 2 year old post I found on the subject : http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/2274/?o=20


It's not a hardware issue. The hardware does not control what IRQ it's placed on, that's the mobo's job. There's a pllc controller on the mobo that works with addressing the PCI and AGP slots to the northbridge, etc. So don't start ripping out your $400 Geforce FX card or your $250 SoundBlaster Audigy, and especially not the ram. The reason there are reports of "fixing" the problem by removing pci cards is because it would then free up the conflicting IRQ slot, but as soon as you put any piece of hardware back in, it would continue to conflict. I get these BSODs every once in a while, p**ses me off, but it's normally when I'm playing games, so I tend not to lose anything important(maybe just a frag or two on CS ).
Check in your BIOS, if there's an option to set reserves on IRQ slots, set it so the highest IRQs are reserved, this also speeds things up because the higher the IRQ, the lower the priority it is(Ex. The OS reserves IRQ 0 for system devices such as ACPI, Memory Management, etc).

Most importantly, make sure you NEVER EVER have anything in the first pci slot. This isnt a problem for most Geforce & ATI owners, since that port is blocked by the massive heatsinks. But if you do have that port free, dont use it! Reason being, it's shared with the AGP slot. So if you have a Geforce 2 sitting in your AGP slot, the PCI slot plugged into the first slot will share resources and priority with your graphics card.

The solution is to uninstall everything you can, so that the OS will map everything correctly and it will automatically make sure there's no IRQ sharing. It's a pain, but it fixes the problem.