ACPI -- good or bad??

[Ryo-Ohki 0]

Although this question has probably been asked, I'm curious about the pros/cons of ACPI. I've heard both good and bad from my friends, but I'm curious to hear what you all think. I turned it off the other day, and 2k went nuts redetecting all my hardware and stuff...and since then, Diablo II has BSOD'd right before after the opening videos.

Also on a side note...I have a Viper 770 Ultra, and I'm using the 5.30 drivers, forcing it to use the Ultra driver. Does it really matter whether or not it uses the regular tnt2 or the tnt2 ultra drivers? I did notice that my monitor is no longer able to go into standby...actually, never has since I've used the detonators for 2k.

 

My system:

 

Tyan Tsunami 1830S

Intel Pentium II 400

320 MB PC-100 RAM

Maxtor 13.1 GB and WD 8.4 GB Hard Drives

Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore 6x kit w/beta DXR3 Drivers

Creative Labs Live! Value w/Live!Ware 3.0 for Windows 2000

Intel Inbusiness 10/100 Ethernet Adapter

Adaptec AIC-7850 SCSI-2 Controller

Yamaha 6x4x16 SCSI-2 CDRW

Diamond Viper 770 Ultra w/Detonator 5.30 (TNT2 Ultra driver)

Windows 2000 5.00.2195 Service Pack 1, RC 1.59

 

Well, thats about it.

[ComputerMan 0]

Well mostly depends on your video drivers.

I cannot make it sleep and resume without probs in Win2k, it does however in Win98.

[euankirkhope 0]

ACPI is good if it works, Bad if it doesn't.

 

In my case it's a compromise, between having no com ports and working com ports. I chose the first! (mainly because hibernation was fun for a while, and my TNT a couple of bios' ago refused to work without it.)

 

EG:

 

 

 

------------------

System Spec:

FIC VA-503+ 1.1b bios JE439

CPU Current Limiter Disabled

AMD K6-2 550 (300 when I talk to FIC tech support)

128Mb SSi PC100

STB Velocity 4400 16Mb AGP PAL TV-Out

Hauppauge Wintv Model 406

Realtek 8029 LAN

Creative ES1371 (PCI64v)

56.6K (AkA 44k) ISA Modem

Creative 48mx CDROM

Memorex TriMaxx200(DVD/CDR/CDRW, 6,4,24) (cracked 1.60 bios)

Maxtor 91301U3 13Gb

LS120

and com and lpt i/o conflict error during bios startup.

Hardware fault caused by win2k beta3 and dodgy bios, now irrepairable.

Serial IO card

[BladeRunner 0]

Personally, I love ACPI.

OK so you gotta have a whole lot of devices that support it correctly.

A lot of motherboard BIOS's said they supported it and then updates were released that read 'Updated ACPI so it works' :-)

As one of the other posts said, excellent if it works, terrible if it doesn't.

Thankfully ABit seem to have their ACPI support well sorted.

 

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PIII 650 Coppermine, ABit BE6-II, 384MB PC100 RAM (Samsung), Matrox G400MAX, SB Live! Value, Intel 10/100 NIC, Adaptec 2940UW, IBM 7200 ATA66 22GB HD, IBM 7200 ATA66 20GB HD, Pioneer 32x/6x SCSI DVD, Yamaha 4416 SCSI CD-RW, Iomega Zip 100 SCSI Internal, Iiyama Vision Master Pro 410.

Windows 2000 Only

[leoncatz 0]

This is a highly debated topic. There is no better way to know something than to understand it. I mean understand as learning how it applies to you. Here is the technincal information that I believe you were asking for in your posting. Since noone else really answered you. Rightly so,

http://www.teleport.com/~acpi/faq.htm

That should be a good read. Take it from me, it's very important to read information about the technology you're purchasing, it changes so fast. You think you're bying Hubba Bubba...Then you look at the pack and it says...Hubboo Bubboo....LOL

 

I studied MicroComputer Technologies Exclusively and the one thing I realized is, that it was a good thing that I love to read. Cause there certainly alot of stuff to know when it comes down to I.T.

 

Most of the transitions from one tech to another are linear. Never will you find a tech that completely forgets all of the preceding tech. A little step up from the crap they dished out last year, is what we get.

 

 

[This message has been edited by leoncatz (edited 18 July 2000).]

[Cardinal 0]

Ryo (or something)

disregarding your first question [i had a via chipset mobo and found disabling ACPI made the pc crash less but it worked fine on my bx2000]

About your tnt2u question and the drivers. I was curious about the exact same thing, like when I would let any OS detect the card they would insist it was a TNT2 not a TNT2Ultra so initially I thought I had been taken for a fool at the pc market but later found most people experience the same thing. I still don't know which driver to use but I will say that in quake 3 and both UT I received 3 fps faster with the TNT2 drivers. :\

[jkomkov 0]

To answer your question about the V770Ultra registering as a TNT2 when using refernce drivers, Diamond strayed away from the nVidia reference design when making the board. They ID'd the chip 028(ID for TNT2) instead of 029(ID for TNT2U) like every other TNT2Ultra card maker out there. As far as which driver to use I have tried both and have not noticed any difference in performance.

[pivko 0]

well first it is necessary to point out that there is NO WAY how to change from ASPI enabled to disabled or vice versa without reinstalling the system, well actually there is, but it is VERY unstable, so it`s better to reinstall it.

 

second, on some systems ACPI works very well, on some does not, the worst thing is, that even when you use the same mobo as your friend, you might still get different results. mine comp does work much better without ACPI enabled. but the best way is to try it and see.

 

generally speaking, there are some problems especially with NVIDIA based video cards, the drivers are far from being perfect, but still it might work very well for you. mine doesn not though :-(

[PatkIllA 0]

I've two computers with nvidia based cards(TNT2 Ultra,Geforce2) and both work fine with ACPI; Hibernate, StandBy.

My Mobos : Supermicro P6DBU

ABIT BP6

[euankirkhope 0]

Pviko:

 

Its ACPI, not ASPI , it is very easy, and simple to switch between Standard PC, and ACPI. The only time it is unstable, or ruins windows, is when it has been incorrectly installed in the first place. Which is why it becomes/is unstable.

 

This is the case for those people (like myself) who had to disable acpi in txtsetup.sif long ago in beta days. The first beta CD MS sent me ripped through my hardrive, practically messing everything up, then wouldn't boot after installing because UDMA was enabled. It also did something to my com ports, which FIC say can't be undone. They still work, but complain about them all conficting with one and other. Thats at bios POST, nothing to do with ACPI or APM, but was caused by it.

 

After 7 bios revisions, everything is almost fine.

[tristan777 0]

hmmmm.... which FIC board do u have? i have had alot of similar problems. first of all, my com ports are screwed up. i had a beta of win2k a while back, but i never really used it much. i tried installing it on same partition, because i didnt want to reformat, which was a mistake. anyway i never got it installed. then i installed the retail one when it was released and i had the same problems i did in beta. i ended up riping everything out of my comp except video card. and it installed. i had a few com port problems but i got them fixed. then i reformatted again to dual boot. this time i couldnt fix the problem with my com ports. 1 and 3(modem) conflicted. the only solution i found was to disable com1 in the bios. other wise i had to delete it if i ever wanted to connect to the internet. then i decided to enable acpi, which was a mistake. now APM doesnt even work under 98, let alone 2000. whenever i shut it down, it just restarts. i have never had hibernate or suspend or anything in 2000.... my friend has the same mobo as me and he has never had any problems with his com ports, or anything. and i'm pretty sure he has acpi. i have and sb live and a v770u and he has a sonic impact and a v2 2000, which used to be a.... banshee. thats what it was.

[Guest]

I have Asus P5A-B mobo with ACPI bios, but w2k installs itself as a standard PC. If I change this to "ACPI computer" using F5 in install screen the system reboots as soon as file copying ends.

[Uncut_Diamond 0]

My BP6 works fine with ACPI enabled (which I prefer as long as it works). Good thing for me that I browsed this site for info on the BP6 before I bought it because they had info that ACPI did not work with win2k unless you had BIOS QQ or RU. I am using RU with no problems whatsoever.

 

Except the question I have is, if you have ACPI enabled in the BIOS and properly installed in win2k then why do the BIOS' IRQs not match up with the win2k ones?? According to my BIOS my NIC is 10 but in windows its 17. Weird!!

 

A friend of mine has ACPI enabled and his BIOS sets his IRQ's and then his Windows 98 uses the same as the BIOS sets. Of course he has never had problems with ACPI in windows 98 since he enabled ACPI and installed it properly (that registry hack you have to do in 98)........!