Jump to content

Potential Bottlenecks. An IRQ Question


Recommended Posts

So, I'm looking at the mobo book for the X99-E mobo I got.  I looked at the PCI-e slots, and noticed that slots 1 and 3 have different IRQ's.  Slots 1, 2, and slots 4 - 7 all have Shared IRQ's.  I was planning on putting a PCI-e SSD card in slot 5.  Since I was planning on an nVidia SLI set up using slots 1 and 3, I worried that slot's 1 and 5 would share the same IRQ.

 

I know that each slot has their own lane to the northbridge in the CPU, so there's no bottleneck there, but will sharing an IRQ cause a bottleneck between nVidia card in slot one and the PCI-e SSD card in slot 5?

 

I want maximum performance with the PCI-e SSD, and I think it's best performance might take a hit, if it has to share resources with the nVidia card.  I'm thinking that the nVidia card will want to interrupt a lot, and so will the PCI-e SSD.

 

Anyone know if my worries for a potential bottleneck are real, or imagined, as it relates to sharing an IRQ?

Edited by PlanetSmasher

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So, after bumbling about in Google Land, I discovered that starting with PCI ver 2.2, MSI (Message Signaled Interrupts) is the new IRQ (Interrupt Request).  Starting with PCIe 3.0, MSI-X (Extended Message Signaled Interrupts) became the updated and advanced version of MSI.

 

So, why is my mobo book still talking about IRQ's?!  It seems that I might have to make a BIOS change in order to enable MSI or MSI-X...  At least that is what I think I understood from reading stuff in Google Land.  Yet, there is nothing in my mobo book about this.

 

Anyone have any experience with this?  Or have a better understanding about this?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Unless you've disabled MSI interrupts somehow, you're fine. Most modern hardware won't even run without them, so you can be reasonably sure they're enabled if your computer functions. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...