what IRQ/slot for AGP???

[alexudal]

I've ASUSTek P3B-F, 5 PCI+1ISA+AGP. Somewhere found a tip that it will be somewhat better for 2D @ big res (I run 1920x1440) if my refurb (5ns 32 MB SGRAM Max'ed w/PII fan) Matrox G400 DH would have a dedicated IRQ for it (alone). My BIOS has it 'AUTO' now, and only for 'PCI' devices/slots. Is it true that AGP slot corresponds to the first PCI slot?
Then, there's PCI steering by Win98SE on the same IRQ as my Matrox has, is it normal, or I better order these go different IRQs?
Thank you, and any other hint on accelerating 2D for higher resolutions will be greatly appreciated.

[Gurm]

On most motherboards, yes the first PCI slot shares a hardware IRQ (note - a HARDWARE irq) with the AGP slot.

On some motherboards (like the one I'm running now), it's the second PCI slot (weird, huh?).

The IRQ steering is normal - it's not a real device, it's something windows assigns to the device. Don't worry about it.

- Gurm

[Dr Mordrid]

This is the P3B-F's IRQ and INT sharing list;

PCI1- INTA shared with AGP
PCI2- INTB unshared
PCI3- INTC shared with PCI6 (if a 6 slot model)
PCI4- INTD shared with PCI5 and USB

To get the AGP alone just leave PCI1 open.

Dr. Mordrid

[alexudal]

Thank you Gurm and Dr Mordrid, you were very helpful. Some more details and problems remain unresolved though.
1. So, for my purpose, and by a theory that a dedicated hardware interrupt for PCI 1 (for ASUS P3B-F rev. 1006) is better than 'AUTO' option in the BIOS setup, do I take the Win98SE interrupt table reading and just put it in the BIOS, right? I have the Sound Blaster Live! as the PCI 2nd slot device, do I need to dedicate its IRQ here in the BIOS too? Has anybody of you felt any gains?

2. I run DVD movies with WinDVD 3.1/Power DVD software players(plus some DVD Genie tweaks) quite good at 1800x1440: there are some jerks at abrupt scene changes, thats true, but if it bothers me a lot, I switch to 1280x1024 where it's absolutely smooth. So I'm sure that when I buy me the AccessDTV HDTV PCI card I will have a perfect 1080i picture. What really bothers me in my 2D rendering is that dragging windows across the usual (no DVD, no media player working) desktop is NOT so fast in re-rendering changing position. That was a reason I asked for that last resource like dedicated IRQ. Is there anything else I could do about it?

3. I'm considering to upgrade my 2.5 yo P3B-F to maybe P4B or Abit RAID or JetWay I401Raid socket 478 P4 Pentium 1.5+ mobo, and bring my Max'ed Matrox G400 there. Has anybody noticed any 2D improvement at high (1600x1280x32) and higher resolutions while doing similar transitions, because of sheer bigger CPU/bus power? Or do I need for that go Athlon XP way, what do you think? Or is it the end of Matrox the Champ here?

[Dr Mordrid]

1. If I were doing it I'd lock the IRQ in at the BIOS level and not use AUTO. That said I'd also put that SBLive on it's own IRQ as well, not that I'd use one of those to start with

2. have you tried setting the display drivers not to show the window contents when dragging?

3. DO NOT buy a mainboard with a built-in RAID adapter. More often than not it'll be a HighPoint chipset, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Even if it were a Promise chipped RAID I'd feel the same since if the onboard RAID chipset goes to hell you may well have problems getting a separate card to work well with it.

Get your RAID as a separate card from the get-go. I prefer the Promise TX4, but the 3Ware cards are also very good. Stay as far from the HighPoint's as you can. The Promise SuperTrak's are also iffy for editing & gaming since they are made more with serving and security in mind than speed.

Dr. Mordrid

[alexudal]

Thank you Dr Mordid, here are the results:
1. Locked IRQs of G400 and SBLive! on 11 and 10, respectively. No changes in rendering speed whatsoever. Apparently I hit the ceiling with my G400 Max'ed.

2. Naturally, a contentless frame of the window drags smooth and nice, but what's the purpose? The thing that nags me is that all the content of my windows SCROLLS fast, smooth and with nice acceleratins/decelerations when braking, however big the content is (better be less than 10 MB though). Now practically the same, or even lesser window leaves stupid multiple ghost traces when being dragged, like I'm using a monochrome laptop, no, so-called "portable" of a 286 era (I had one back then, for $2200: a used Compaq)

3. Faulty RAID with possibly bad (Promise, if the mobo is JetWay) RAID chip is like a 39th of my concerns, as the mobo+P4 1.5GHz+box+512 PC133 RAM is around $360, dirt cheap. What is of my concern really, is the processing + memory + bus speed and resulting gain in 2D at high-res. Just the recent news has it that new DiVX 4.11 has special (overlay) acceleration encoding/decoding feature based on P4 extra command set, wish there would be other frame-buffer rendering (2D) enhancements. All the Athlons don't seem attractive in this (2D) respect, as their PhotoShop performance is mediocre so far.