Performance Issues (ISA/PCI s/cards...)

[Guest]

Howdy kids...

Can someone settle an issue I've been thinking about???

Would there be *any* system performance issues/degredation when using an old ISA soundcard (SB Vibra16...) in an otherwise brand new system compared to a new PCI one? I'm thinking along the lines of the ISA bus speed/hogging the channel etc...

Any views?

Cheers,

J

 

[camieabz]

ISA bus clock speed = 8MHz : Max Data Rate = 7.629Mb/s
PCI bus clock speed = 33MHz : Max Data Rate = 133Mb/s
PCI is therefore 17+ times faster.

 

[Fa1c0n]

You may be able to use it without too much (in other words, more than is acceptible to you) slowdown if you configure your BIOS to use the optimum settings for your ISA card (eg. how long the bus waits for it). These settings depend on your ISA card, motherboard, and BIOS to some extent. Make sure you have "passive release" set to "enabled" and "Delayed Transaction" set to "enabled". If your PCI cards stop working then set "Delayed Transaction" back to "Disabled" (If that happens it means that your ISA card is not PCI 2.1 compliant, and that it will only work in "Delayed Transaction=Disabled" mode and will "hog" about 50-60 PCI clock cycles while your PCI cards wait for it... Not what you want). As far as I know, no matter what you do, it will slow down your system more than a PCI card though. It just depends on what is acceptable to you.

I am not an expert on just how much an ISA card will affect your system over an PCI sound card. And my advice is subject to human error. So you may want to get some more opinions first.


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