PCI Steering enable or throw out the door??

[chameleon]

I recently upgraded my computer to a 1Ghz Athalon TB and a MSI K7T pro 2-A, thank you, thank you no aplause needed. Any way this is my first encounter with the evil PCI steering that has eaten up all my IRQ's. The main problem has been with my SBLive card on IRQ 5 and I fixed that buy reserving IRQ 5 in the BIOS for legacy ISA. With that in mind now PCI steering is sharing 3 other IRQ's. One in particular IRQ 10 has 4 different items attached to it. My question now is will this effect my profromance and /or stability, and if so should I disable it. I tried it once and my NIC card no longer could be reconized. Anyone else out there who has shared my pain and has a possible fix of course please respond.

much appreciated help thanks,

Bweb....

 

[jmorrell]

PCI IRQ steering doesn't eat up IRQ's, it allows devices to SHARE IRQ's. If APCI is enabled in the BIOS (usually is by default), you most often WILL get several items on one IRQ, and they will all work just fine. According to the Microsoft Knowledgebase, ACPI will not LET you change IRQ assignment manually (I know, I have tried). The owner of a local computer shop once told me he had a computer in that had SEVEN items on one IRQ, and it worked great. If everything works fine on your computer, don't worry about PCI IRQ steering.