Assign IRQ to video card???

[Death To Mel]

I have an Ati rage pro card and in my bios I see the option of assigning an IRQ to my card. What are the advantages of doing this? Disadvantages? And if you know (what does it do?)

[RobRich]

Assigning an IRQ to a video gives it a hardware interupt line. An IRQ is like a pulse signal that controls how the card works with the chipset, bios, memory, and cpu. An IRQ is like timing gate that controls what deviced has presence at a given point in time. As for does you ATI card need an IRQ, I would enable it. Most newer cards require an IRQ to operate correctly.

[BMF]

If you think your card needs an IRQ to operate enable it, although if it's already working fine without it enabled, maybe it's ok. Remember you have a limited number of IRQ's on your computer.

[Pantion]

Some card need an IRQ so they can work properly. My banshee needed one otherwise it would make my scanner stop responding... pretty strange, but it happened.

Anyway assigning an IRQ also enables bus mastering if the card supports it. It won't affect your performance or maybe it will increase it. Anyway to get out of IRQs you need to have lots of peripherials that requiere one, but I don't think that is something you are worring about.