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Does PCI slot selection matter?

K

karmasalad

Senior member
I'm just wondering, since Win2k has its own funky IRQ management, does the selection of which slot you place your PCI cards in matter?

I've got three cards (GTXP, 56k modem, Netgear NIC) in a CUSL2-C BP and I'm just wondering if choosing unshared slots still matters to avoid conflicts. For my mobo, slots 2/3/6 are not shared, but for convenience's sake, I'd prefer to just have everything in 1 - 3.
 
To a point, it does matter. There are some cards that don't work well when sharing recourses with another card.
 
Depending on the board you use, it does matter. Many boards do funky things with their IRQs, and as such, you can only stick sound cards in certain slots, network cards in others, etc. This was especially true with the ABit 440BX boards, dunno how important it is on todays chipsets.
 
You may all not like me for saying this, but I have seen some cards actually have better performance by being closer to the North Bridge. Usually doesn't matter though.
 
It all has to do with the way the PCI slots are wired to the programmable interrupt controller on the motherboard you own.

In a perfect universe, PCI card manufacturers have designed their products to share interrupts and behave very nicely like a good participant of the happy universe known as ACPI. But every now and then a bad card will usurp the bus a little longer than it is supposed to and cause your sound card to hiccup.

You can read more about it in this wonderful faq originally written for the Abit Kt7 but applicable to most modern motherboards.
 
Actually if they are compatible in all slots then you should put the longest and widest cards in the bottom and shortest and thinnest at the top, with as much even spacing in the middle if possible. This way more of the hot air doesn't get stuck under a card.
 


<< Actually if they are compatible in all slots then you should put the longest and widest cards in the bottom and shortest and thinnest at the top, with as much even spacing in the middle if possible. This way more of the hot air doesn't get stuck under a card. >>



Hey, that's a good point! Thanks for the suggestion. 🙂
 
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