audiophile 24/96 - which PCI slot?

[physics club]

What PCI slot should I drop my audiophile 24/96 into the following system:

-mobo: asus p4pe
-proc: intel P4 2.4b
-ram: kingston ddr 2700 512 mb
-HD: Western Digital 20GB ATA/100 7200RPM op system. one Western Digital 40GB ATA/100 7200RPM for audio,
-CD-RW drive
-op system: XP pro
-video: Matrox millen G450 16 MB DDR

drive configuration:

Primary Master = WD#1 (XP-pro OS/programs)
Primary Slave = CD-RW
Secondary Master = WD#2 (audio/wavs)

I want to avoid any conflicts and such. THANKS!!

 

[christiaan]

The PCI slot right next to the AGP often shares its IRQ with the AGP slot so you'd better try to avoid sticking anything in that one. Apart from that...
I can't really say that your PC is full with all sorts of exotic hardware so... Have you even tried any slot yet?
If not, don't be too scared!

 

[physics club]

no, haven't tried any yet. i AM a little nervous since this is my first system construction!! just want to make sure i have all the bases covered before i start work. thanks for your tip!!

 

[Stealthtech]

Slot 5 would be most appropriate for the p4pe
By the way, you're setup is basically the same as mine with the exception of the size of the HD's

 

[RWhite]

Christiaan is right on, you probably want to avoid slot 1.

I've read through many ASUS P3 motherboard manuals at work, and they all had a chart in them detailing which slots shared which IRQs with what. So.... check the manual.

 

[physics club]

So the goal is to choose one that doesn't have anything sharing on it? i looked at that page in the manual but i was totally confused!!! unless anyone has a good reason not to go with slot 5 i think i'm just going to take stealth's advice!

 

[Stealthtech]

So the goal is to choose one that doesn't have anything sharing on it? i looked at that page in the manual but i was totally confused!!! unless anyone has a good reason not to go with slot 5 i think i'm just going to take stealth's advice!

I have always used slot 5 on ASUS boards without any problems or conflicts. Once you have it setup go to programs>accessories>system tools. From there go to the category hardware resources. Check the conflicts\sharing to verify all is well. Also check IRQ's to see what IRQ was assigned to your Ap 2496. The P4PE does not have a non-sharing slot. As long as you dont have 3 or 4 PCI cards you will be just fine. And dont forget to disable onboard audio if your version of the P4PE has it. The AP can be setup to also be used as the system sound device so disableing the onboard will prevent any conflicts.

 

[Paul881]

The AP can be setup to also be used as the system sound device so disableing the onboard will prevent any conflicts.

Won't the bios automatically disable the onboard audio if the BIOS setting is set to auto and therefore detects a PCI soundcard? Doesn't the onboard audio (mobo) need the drivers to be loaded from the ASUS CD for it to work?

 

[christiaan]

Won't the bios automatically disable the onboard audio if the BIOS setting is set to auto and therefore detects a PCI soundcard? Doesn't the onboard audio (mobo) need the drivers to be loaded from the ASUS CD for it to work?

You may be right but I wouldn't really trust a bios to recognize any soundcard as such. There are hundreds if not thousands of different soundcards and a bios is a very basic, dumb, piece of software to bring the computer up to a level that's just enough for the operating system to take over.
'Auto' can mean anything.
For instance if onboard audio is optional for that type of motherboard (so that it's sold in two flavours, with or without sound onboard) it means as much as 'yes' if sound is actually onboard.
I don't want to make this post too technical but I'll give you an example: I have an ASUS motherboard with a SCSI bios onboard which means I can boot from a symbios logic scsi interface that I plug in a PCI slot which itself has no bios onboard. This all works fine.
Whether I can boot from the interface is defined by one setting in the motherboard bios. It's either 'Auto' (so it is enabled if a supported scsi interface is detected by the motherboard) or 'off'.

When you want to disable the onboard audio, just set it to off in the bios.