Bad nic card???
 

I have a cable modem and dsl. Whether I play single player or multi, my fps drops every second with a modem turned on. Unplug or shut off modem, and my fps doesn't dip. Why would this affect single player too? It does the same thing with Wolfenstein. And I can see the effect in my screen saver. Using the "starfield" screen saver, I see the stars hesitate every second. Turn off either modem and the motion gets smooth. When I'm running in the games, the image hesitates every time the fps drops. Again, turn off modem and I run real smooth. Is my nic card bad? How does the nic affect video? Appreciate some help.

What NIC card do you have? I've heard that 3com is the best.

is your nic sharing irqs w/ your video card? What OS you running? Motherboard? Chipset? Onboard nic?

What is sharing irqs? XP I don"t know, its a DEll 8200. Onboard nic?? Sorry, I don't know that much about computers. Why would shutting off modem stop the problem?

It sounds more likely that the software maintaining your internet connection is causing the problem than the card itself. If you want to check the IRQ setting on the hardware though, right click on my computer, go to properties, go to hardware, go to the device manager, find your video card and NIC card in the list, go to properties, go to resources, you will find your IRQ setting there. Onboard = is your card built into your motherboard, or on the same card with sound etc., or does it have it's own card and slot?

I did what you said and found IRQ of 18 for NIC and 16 for video card. My v.card is a GeForce3 Ti200. When I have DSL modem plugged in my fps fluctuates every second from about 95 to 75. Then when I connect to internet the fps fluctuates from 95 down to 55 every second. The cable modem stays at 95 to 75 even when connected to internet. And I see the hesitation more in screensaver with DSL connected to internet. I turn either one off and I have no fluctuation/hesitation at all. Its driving me nuts!! And no one has a solution. And thanks for helping.

Look at your sound card's IRQ's. Your more then likely sharing with it.

also if you have the free slots. don't use the PCI slot next to your AGP slot (video card)

These share resources also.

Same goes for an old ISA slot next to a PCI slot. These are shared slots on a Motherboard. If you don't have the room then you don't have a choice and need to work with the system bois or your OS.

Good Luck

rudedog... tell me more about this shared pci slot next to the AGP slot.

if i was full, what card is best shared in that slot?


Doggie

Hey Rude, I didn't know that about the PCI slot next to the AGP slot . There's nothing in the book that came with my Gateway about that , I know in my old Aptiva that one of the slots shared PCI/ISA but they made that pretty clear in the manual . I have my network card (Linksys) in the PCI slot next to the vid card , but I don't think it's causing any problems , at least not serious ones. If I move the network card to a different PCI slot will I have to reinstall the drivers and stuff for the network card ??? The main reason I ask is when I was cleaning out the inside of the PC a while back I noticed that the vid card has a fan on it , I didn't notice that when I installed the network card or I wouldn't have used that slot .The network card is very close to the vid card so I would like to give the vid card a little more breathing space but not if it's going to really mess up my network stuff which I use for the internet.

The problem lies in the way win2k or xp hands out resources. In this case IRQs

I would not place your NIC next to the AGP slot. Because doing so 99% of the time your nic will be assinged the same IRQ (11) as your Video Card.

A way around this is to enable or disable PNP within your motherboards bois.
Be very careful with this. You can screw things up when playing with your bios.

Most of the time all you need to do is swap some card around and you will be able to free up resources.

Personally experience, never put the nic in the slot next to the AGP. If I can I will look for some technical info on these 2 slots sharing.

The FPS changes sound like they're on par with what I get when I run around in the game. Your FPS will always be changing depending on the graphics the video card and your CPU have to render. The more complex, the fewer FPS you'll have. Just rotating can have a large impact on your FPS. I don't think you're having problems until you start lagging or crashing due to NIC/IRQ conflicts.

Monitor your ping, hit tab when you're in the game to see what your latencey is. If you had IRQ conflicts you'd be blue screening when you started to max out your video card and using the NIC at the same time.

IRQ conflicts are rare with NT5 (win2k/XP) because of the hardware abstraction layer takes care of everything, it doesn't rely on IRQ numbering like Win9x used to. If your NIC was installed by the DSL installer or you had to plug a card into your PC's PCI expansion slot, then it's no an "onboard" nic.

Tip:

Your Video occupies the AGP slot, and that shares resources with PCI slot #1 (direct memory access channels or DMA)- make sure that slot 1 is empty. Slot 1 is the PCI slot closest to your video card. A nic could slow down your Video card if installed, but not much. A sound card installed there will. Remember your NIC is able to push 100 times more data than your DSL will ever transmit or recieve, so the NIC isn't working hard at all.

If PCI slot #1 isn't empty, simply power down your computer and unplug it. (Press the power button once more to drain any residual voltage off the motherboard) Then open your case, unscrew the retaining screw on the offending PCI card and move it to another open PCI slot. You may have to remove a cover but then just move that cover to the opening left on PCI slot #1. It's simple - XP will know what you did and reconfigure itself without a problem. cool:

Midget .... XP will reconfigure itself , how about ME ?? I've got the NIC card in the PCI slot next to the Vid card and I'm thinking about moving it but I'm not sure if ME will pick it up without any problems.

knowing ME, it'll need the driver floppy or CD so it can install it again, and you'll reboot about a dozen times while it sets everything back up...

but it'll work out just fine. You're better off moving it and getting it to another DMA channel and IRQ.

Ah the small tid-bits of information I wish I didn't need to know... thanks Microsoft and all you PC manufacturers for making band-aid fix upon band-aid fix so that we now have one big giant bleeding festering wound known as a PC.

At least NT5 started with a fresh scab....

zooka: PC Hardware

Thanks Midget , I checked in the device manager and they are assigned different IRQ's but I wanted to move the NIC because it's very close to the fan on the vid card which I didn't notice when I installed the NIC , I thought maybe the cooling for the vid card might work a little better ... i'll get around to moving the NIC as soon as I find the floppy that came with it , it's here someplace biggrin: .

Forget the floppy and download the latest driver from the manuf. web site. You'll save yourself from having to update it again.