Hey everyone,
This is my first post to the Anandtech forums, but I've appreciated your advice in the past (insofar as your advice to others has applied to me
).
First, my system:
FLATLINE (`Cause it's dead so much )
K7 Thunderbird 800 @ 800
128 Meg (Fry's) PC133 3-3-3 RAM
MSI-6330 K7T-PRO
3D Blaster Annhiliator 2
Sound Blaster Live!
3Com 3C905b
Drivers/Bios:
MSI Bios v2.1
VIA v4.28
FastTrax v634
Live! (Latest)
So, I was having the standard Win2K ACPI "put-every-PCI-card-on-the-same-IRQ" problem, and having 4 devices sharing IRQ 7 was having a severe toll on performance. (3DMark2000 gave a score of ~2000, about 1/3 the nominal score of systems similar to mine.) So I gave Win2K the boot.
I'm much happier with the performance from my fresh Win98 install. My 3dMark2000 score has jumped up to ~6200 (comparable to non-overclocked systems similar to mine), and everything seems to be working fine, with one small exception.
The Win2K IRQ "sharing" fiasco has left me wary of placing devices on the same IRQ. Luckily, I've managet to eliminate all but one case of "sharing". My Video card and USB hub both still want to share IRQ 7, and I'm not sure how I should seperate the two. Are the devices physically tied to the same INT line, and thus inseperable? Would disabling (Assign IRQ to USB) really help, or just render my USB ports unusable? Should I just be happy and live with it?
Hell, while I'm at it, I may as well add this: I set my AGP aperature size to 16 megs, to reduce swappage in Win2K. Will this have the desired effect (freeing up RAM for applications), and if so is it worth the performance loss--if any--that such a small aperature entails?
Thanks for any and all answers,
-Jer
This is my first post to the Anandtech forums, but I've appreciated your advice in the past (insofar as your advice to others has applied to me
).First, my system:
FLATLINE (`Cause it's dead so much
)K7 Thunderbird 800 @ 800
128 Meg (Fry's) PC133 3-3-3 RAM
MSI-6330 K7T-PRO
3D Blaster Annhiliator 2
Sound Blaster Live!
3Com 3C905b
Drivers/Bios:
MSI Bios v2.1
VIA v4.28
FastTrax v634
Live! (Latest)
So, I was having the standard Win2K ACPI "put-every-PCI-card-on-the-same-IRQ" problem, and having 4 devices sharing IRQ 7 was having a severe toll on performance. (3DMark2000 gave a score of ~2000, about 1/3 the nominal score of systems similar to mine.) So I gave Win2K the boot.
I'm much happier with the performance from my fresh Win98 install. My 3dMark2000 score has jumped up to ~6200 (comparable to non-overclocked systems similar to mine), and everything seems to be working fine, with one small exception.
The Win2K IRQ "sharing" fiasco has left me wary of placing devices on the same IRQ. Luckily, I've managet to eliminate all but one case of "sharing". My Video card and USB hub both still want to share IRQ 7, and I'm not sure how I should seperate the two. Are the devices physically tied to the same INT line, and thus inseperable? Would disabling (Assign IRQ to USB) really help, or just render my USB ports unusable? Should I just be happy and live with it?
Hell, while I'm at it, I may as well add this: I set my AGP aperature size to 16 megs, to reduce swappage in Win2K. Will this have the desired effect (freeing up RAM for applications), and if so is it worth the performance loss--if any--that such a small aperature entails?
Thanks for any and all answers,
-Jer
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