I found the problem with PCs at work is their size too, but at home, I want features and expandability. I hate the fact that most mainboards don't have enough IRQs and end up doing PCI steering. The sharing of IRQs on mainboaqrds slow them down, and I find at home, most don't have enough. As an example, I have a time critical 24/96 Sampler unit from STA audio running on an Gigabyite mainboard and Athlon 2600.
What type of motherboard and chipset?
Most companies use the PCI 2.0 spec of sharing because it's cheaper.
The desired compliancy should be PCI 2.3 or PCI 2.2.
I'd like to see them produce a board that's got better performance and charge a little more, but now we are talking about servers which is not needed.
Depands on the type of motherboard, for example
* ASUS A7N8X Dlx, Gigabyte GA-7N400Pro2, GA-K8NNXP LTD ED IRQ numbers can go up to 22 (according to Sandra)(all nForce series).
I have loaded the following motherboards with devices and these are;
1. GA-7N400 Pro2** with Intel ProS Ethernet, VisionDTV(HDTV), SB Audigy SZ 7.1, SiL SATA-150, NV-IDE-133, USB2.0, IEEE 1394,
2. GA-K8NNXP LTD ED with SB Audigy SZ 7.1, VisionDTV(HDTV), SiL SATA-150, NV-IDE-133, USB2.0, IEEE 1394B, NV-NIC(CK8),Intel ProS Ethernet,
Both systems don’t have major issues with DVD-Audio class audio stream.
**I have turned off GigaRAID IT 8212F, Realtek GigaE (8110S-32), Realtek AC97 5.1 Audio since they are redundant devices. Another topic.
