G400 and SBLive! IRQ Conflict Problem

[Chris Blake]

Make sure you've got the latest BIOS and AGP drivers for your motherboard.

Also, you could try moving your SBLive! to a different PCI slot until it goes to another IRQ. I have my SBLive! in slot 3, IRQ 9, but the G400 is on IRQ10 along with my NIC. This is in the BIOS BTW *not* windows device manager.

Once you've achieved this a clean install of Windows might be worth considering.

Hope this helps.

[HedsSpaz]

I had a similar problem once. With almost the exact same cards. An SBLive Value and my G200. Try going into your bios and make sure that all of the IRQ Configuration options are set to autoconfigure. If that doesn't work go back in and force whatever slot your sblive is in to use a different irq. If you have a mobo with an award bios then it should be fairly simple.

HedsSpaz

[cjolley]

This happened to me once too. All I did was move the SB down one PCI slot & Win98 redetected it using a different IRQ. No muss, no fuss, no bother!

chuck


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My MAX is on it's way!




[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 09-15-1999).]

[RoGuE]

Move the SBLive to a different PCI slot.

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aka Chris H
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Microstar 6167 Slot A, AMD Athlon 500MHz, 256MB PC100 RAM, G400 32MB Dual Head, Rainbow Runner G-Series, SBLive! Value, 2xIBM 22GB ATA/66 HDD connected via Promise FastTrak66 RAID controller...etc...etc

[SCompRacer]

Skynet8, what kind of motherboard do you have? Just curious as I seek the common denominator for problems with G400/SB Live IRQ sharing. My G400 shares IRQ 11 with SB Live with no trouble, yet others do. I also get no performance increase with seperate IRQ's.

You already got the good advice in previous postings here for moving SB Live to different slot though.

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P III 500 w/ASUS P2B-LS, Win98 SE.

[Skynet8]

G400 and SBLive! IRQ Conflict Problem

Hi.
I recently bought a G400 and a SBLive! Value together, and installed them (G400 first, then SBLive!). Even with the latest drivers for both cards, games crashed consistently. In Mechwarrior 3, Heavy Gear 2 and Draken, the system freezes about 3 seconds after the 3D game engine kicks in. Boy, was I mad!

Later, I realised that both the G400 and SBLive! were sharing IRQ 9! Once I disabled the G400's bus mastering, the G400 no longer used an IRQ and games run fine now. BUT, games're slow!!!!! The performance hit without bus mastering is incredible and frustrating! You know, 2 top-line cards conflicting with one another sure can drive me nuts!

Win98 doesn't allow me to change the IRQ allocation for both cards, so I've tried it in safe mode. I disabled the SB16 emulation to free IRQ 5 (it's listed as free in Control Panel) and set the G400 to IRQ 5, but then Windows won't boot! If I set the SBLive! to IRQ 5 in safe mode, upon normal restart, it reverts to IRQ 9.

I'll greatly appreciate any help on this matter, specifically on changing the IRQ of either card. Thanks a million!!

[paul]

if you need more irq's and dont use the serial ports, disable them. my sblive likes irq5 for emulation and 10 for normal mode.
if 10 isn't available, emulation is disabled (on my pc)

[Skynet8]

Hi.
Thanks a lot, guys! I'll act upon your suggestions and hopefully, it'll work and I'll really be happier. You're the guys that make helpless pple like me feel that others in the world are really willing to help. You all are really great!!

Oh yeah, I'm using a lousy PhoenixBIOS, latest version but hardly any config settings. The BIOS doesn't have an option to force particular IRQs to the cards, but I have ensured that all the IRQs are on auto-config. I'm thinking of flashing the BIOS to something like the Award BIOS, but I'm afraid that this'll make my Dell computer warranty void.

To SCompRacer, changing IRQ doesn't give a performance change. However, my games crash because my sound card and G400 share the same IRQ (the bus mastering on the G400 requires an IRQ to be used). If I disable bus mastering, the G400 no longer uses that IRQ and the conflict is gone. Disabling bus mastering gives a HUGE performance hit.

Dell Dimension XPS D300
PII 300 MHz
96 MB SDRAM
PheonixBIOS (latest)
6.4 GB IBM Deskstar Ultra ATA-33
Iomega Zip Drive 100 MB (IomegaWare 1.1.3)
Matrox G400 32 MB SingleHead (5.21 drivers w/o OGL ICD)
SBLive! Value (Live!Ware 2.1)
HP ScanJet 5p
HP DeskJet 720C
Dell 1226H monitor (19")

Thanks a lot, once again!

[Skynet8]

Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm using a GenuineIntel motherboard, which is sadly non-overclockable. =(

[Skynet8]

Well, I'm using a PII-300 with only 96MB RAM, SBLive! Value and G400 32 MB, but I can run Unreal at 1024 by 768 in 32-bit colour at a consistent 20fps. That's good enough. Stick with D3D, don't use OpenGL (it doesn't even work with me). Make sure you have the 225f beta patch for Unreal.

[Skynet8]

Sorry about that previous message, I got it posted to the wrong thread. That was supposed to be in an Unreal problem thread.

Anyway, I've changed my SBLive! to another PCI slot and it works! It's now at IRQ 4 while my G400 is at IRQ 9. The problem is, with bus mastering enabled, games still crash. I've noticed that games crash once EAX is used. For example, in Draken, it runs okay until I pick up a potion or something (which uses EAX reverb), and it crashes at this point.

Does anyone else have this problem with the G400 and SBLive! value EAX? Maybe I'll go ask the Creative and Matrox tech support... Anyway, I'll appreciate any help, again.

[kewlcat]

Just checking... Are you running the latest version of Liveware (2.1)? If not, get it at <A HREF="www.sblive.com">SB Live! site</A>.

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Abit BH6, Celeron 300a@450, G400 32MB DualHead, 128MB RAM, WD26500 6.4GB, SBLive! Value.

[kewlcat]

Sorry didn't read your message properly. :P

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Abit BH6, Celeron 300a@450, G400 32MB DualHead, 128MB RAM, WD26500 6.4GB, SBLive! Value.