LinuxQuestions.org - IRQ Balancing DISABLED = performance BOOST!

Success story:

I recently installed FC3 with the cookie cutter 2.6.9 kernel. Having become somewhat skilled at building the 2.6 kernel, I went to task immediately at re-compiling with more optimizations.

One thing I noticed is that I had enabled IRQ Balancing. Please note that I run a Pentium-4 with hyperthreading in a dual-channel mode.

After rebooting to runlevel 3 and installing the nVidia 6629 driver for my GeForce 5900, I then tried running Unreal Tournament 2004 with the UT Patches installed.

What crappy performance!!! :-(

I had all kinds of stuttering video, shaky performance, and in one case I had the game seize up my entire PC!

In a separate incident, I tried burning a music CD using K3b. I had compiled cdrtools, cdrdao, and a bunch of others from source (my preferred method).

I ran out of software buffer while burning the CD no fewer than 6 times. Fortunately, K3b and the cdrecord utility avoided giving me a coaster due to the BURN-proof capabilities of my burner.

I had heard conflicting reports of what IRQ balancing does, but sadly the help text associated with this kernel option is vague.

So, I re-compiled the kernel after unchecking the IRQ balancing option.

Now, my PC runs a lot faster, UT2004 is much more smooth and fluid, and I can burn CD's/DVD's much more reliably.

Just curious, does anyone know of a discussion, thread on linuxquestions.org, Google page, or whatever that discusses what IRQ balancing REALLY does? What can it do or not do for me? Thanks in advance....