What does EVERYBODY want? BIOS TWEAKING!!!

- Bios Features Setup Part of Your Bios Thingy -

This is what I like to call the Mycrowsoft section of the bios: everything is so simple and straight forward even, I bet even my sister could figure it out. Then again, I might have said too much... And don't ask me why, but this reminds me of something in Grade 4. Ah, the memories... my best friend at the time was a guy named Brendan, and we would always run across the school yard together and run head first into the portables. I know how gay that sounds, but it was fun; we both loved the Back to the Future series so much that we, um, sort of pretended that we were the time machine vanishing moments before hitting a wall. And, well, we didn't disappear literally, but our consciousness did... It was at that year that I did one of the few Christmas concert presentation thingies that I actually remember. I was a sheep, dressed in white, and bahing next to Brendan's leg (yes, I know that doesn't sound good either; just remember he was dressed as a shepherd...). And in front of all the parents, I shot up and we both started to rap 4 or 6 or something lines of a poem the teacher forced us to memorize. I think Grade4 was the first year I tried to be creative in front of huge crowds. It's the only year I actually won a speech contest, and now that I'm in High School, I really wonder if anyone from my old, Grade4 elementary school remembers who the heck I used to be... God, I hope they don't...

Virus Warning / Protection - I [pray to God no-one keeps this option on. How useless can a feature possibly be? This ______ virus warning thingy doen't really scan for viruses; it compares your hard drive partition to what it was the last ______ time you booted up. If the boot sector of your drive has changed, it declares a state of emergency and you'll have ______ the FBI waiting by your house in not time. The problem is, installing OSs or even some problems like Norton ______ Utilities will change your partition, and then this virus protection thingy will go crazy and start knocking down ______ houses for nothing. I mean, I do agree that there should be a law or something against installing Windows9x, but ______ this is just ridiculous.

CPU Level 1 (Internal ) Cache - The L1 cache practically runs your computer. It doesn't matter how fast your
______ CPU is; if it doesn't have a L1 cache to keep track of everything your CPU does, your computer ain't going
______ anywhere. Imagine it like this: the CPU is the man of the house, and the L1 is the wife that whips him
______ into doing everything he needs to do. Just keep in mind that disabling your L1 cache is like turning an
______ Athlon into a computer as crappy as, well, um - mine...

CPU Level 2 (External) Cache - The L2 cache is just as important as the L1 cache, except that it's must be
______ larger than the L1 cache because it is not directly on top of the CPU. An L2 cache must run at the same
______ speed as the CPU, otherwise... um, remember way back when they had Celeron 333s? Remember how
______ crappy their FPU performance was in games like Pong? Well, just remember that disabling your L2 is
______ like, well - buying a Celeron, which, for some, is a fate a lot worse than death. Some are actually so
______ desperate to overclock their computer to hell that they disable their L2 to do it; but what point is there
______ to turning your Willamette 1.6GHz to a crappy Celeron 1.65GHz or something?

CPU L2 ECC Check - I recommend to keep this option on. Enabling it will slow down your computer a bit
______ to keep checking and flushing errors out of that L2. But disabling it will probably cause overloads in
______ your caching system, and will probably cause a Y2k+1 bug or something. I've tried both settings, on
______ and off, and can't tell a real difference in speed, so I don't bother to risk my computer's sanity (I know,
______ I know, that doesn't sound like me... it's too safe, too logical...)

Quick Power on Self Test - God, who could actually stand keeping this one on? Enable the quick test, and
______ your computer will boot after checking the first MB of memory for errors. And disabling it will sort of
______ check every single bit and byte of memory you've got. I tested my sister's laptop once; all 128MB of
______ RAM of it. I started the power test, left to eat a TV dinner or something, and by the time I got back,
______ Windows was just starting to boot up...

Boot Sequence - Just explains the order that you want your disk drives to boot up in. If you've got a hard drive
______ (um - stupid question, but...), the boot sequence should start with your C: drive. If Windows is on a SCSI
______ drive, put the SCSI option first. If for some weird reason, you've got your OS on a CD or LS120 or something,
______ set that first. Not much to do here except fooling your friends into thinking they've lost their hard drive
______ the next time they boot up.

Boot Up Floppy Seek - Turn this on if you want to use boot disks. Turn this off if you shave a second off your
______ boot time and skip the check for a disk in the a: drive.

Boot Up Numlock Status - Have I ever told you guys my little pet peeve of num lock? Everywhere I go,
______ people are using num lock here, and there, and, well - here. And everytime I pass by their keypad, I
______ just turn off num-lock and let the keyboard rest in peace. I mean, how could the keys possibly get any
______ sleep if someone keeps their lights on all night? Um, wait - that didn't sound very good... Well, I
______ personally disable this optin to prevent the computer from turning on num lock when it boots. Too bad
______ some old TSRs actually require num-lock to be on when your computer starts up, and woe is me, I cannot
______ force you all to do the same unless you're all illogical like I am, and that is sadly hard to believe...
______ -fake sigh-...

Boot Up System Speed - Hmm... High or low? High or low? High or low?... Take one goddam guess...

Gate A20 Option - This is something from way back in the medieval ages, when 486s were revolutionary. I
______ still remember the first day I got a 486; I was used to a 286XT that had no hard drive, so you could
______ imagine how perplexed I was at the concept of "installing" a program. I think that was the only time in
______ history I had to ask my cousin of all people to help me with the computer... Anyhew, you might as well
______ leave this option on fast in order to initialize the keyboard faster at boot up, but I don't really notice a
______ difference whether the A20 thingy is on or off.

Typematic Rate Setting, Chars/Sec, & Delay - Typematic rate setting should be enabled so software can
______ control the responsivity or something, if I spelled that correctly, of your keyboard. I'm forced to keep
______ this setting on; I'm still using a AT keyboard for Christ's sake, and I'm sure as hell not going to use its
______ hardware typematic settings. On my sister's laptop, I had to set her characters per second to the max
______ of 30 or something because anything lower caused... well, if you typed out a sentence in Microsoft Word,
______ by the time you were done, her laptop was still writing the first two words, so... um, I recommend you
______ keep the chars/sec at 30 just so your keyboard actually is worth more than a typewriter. As for the delay,
______ keep that at 250 msec. The lower the setting, the faster your keyboard will initialize and type every key
______ you, um, key in or something.

PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Most video card people will slap you silly if you turn this option on. And yes, they are
______ trying to prove that they are smarter than you because they read my web-page... um, but I don't think
______ this palette snooping hasn't really been useful since the days of XGA & EGA & PGA Tour Golf or whatever
______ we used back in the glory days of Rome. I remember that it enhanced refresh rate or something in DOS,
______ & that it improves colouring on MPEG cards, & the PCI snooping part does sound tempting, but... it may
______ lead to conflicts in Win9x so leave it off for now until I actually become smart enoughto figure this
______ thing out.

OS Selected for DRAM > 64MB - You got more than 64MB of RAM? Good, you're better off than I am. Got
______ more than 64MB of Hard drive space? Good, you're still better off than I am. Got something better than
______ Os/2? Thank God you do - I'd get your mom to slap your underwear if you didn't... hmm, that actually
______ sounds yummy... oops, um, where was I? Anyhew, keep this option on non-OS/2 if you've got Win9x
______ or WinNT to optimize memory paging above 64MB. And if you're still one of those suckers (like me...)
______ who bought Os/2 4 for 6 pesos last spring, set it to the other option and practicing slapping yourself.

Cyrix 6x86/MII CPU ID - I keep this option on, and don't ask me why because I'm still stuck with that Pentium
______ 166 of mine. Turning this option on will make your computer check if you've got a Cyrix CPU sitting
______ somewhere in its territory, and then alert you that an infidel have protruded on your domain. Only
______ people desperate enough to buy an eMachine would actually have a Cyrix CPU or something, so if you
______ want to save yourself a sixtieth of a second of boot-time, turn this option off.

Boot Sequence EXT Menus - Most computers have 2 IDE slots. Some Abit boards and stuff have 3 or 4. If you
______ are trying to boot from one of those extra thingies, you have to enable this feature, otherwise leave it off
______ to keep your computer running in pristine order with that trojan called Windows in memory.

Processor Num Feature - It's not enough to say the Matrix has you (which hundreds of virus makers seem to
______ keep saying because they're not creative enough to think up their own material...). We've known for a
______ long time that the Intel has us with that stupid serial number attached to PentiumIIIs. Keep this option
______ off if you want to keep your privacy in the crapper and not have internet porn sites peeping at
______ your, um, screwdriver. If you have to turn this on to get into a secure, government intelligence site
______ like the KKK secret meeting web address or, um, ebay, make sure you disable this feature right away
______ after you're done practicing on yourself.

Video Bios Shadow - It's never good to shadow anything, especially not the video bios. Even though I think
______ shadowing the bios in RAM will probably make certain apps more stable (since RAM is 64-bit and the
______ 3d card's bios is 8-bit or something), it slows down all your games a bit because not only are you using
______ up that precious 24k of RAM (well, 24k is a lot to me with my crap computer...), but every time a graphic
______ is drawn, shadowing forces your 3dcard to keep searching for its lost soul in RAM. Today's little games
______ tend to be able to access their needed crap data from the hardware itself and not from the 8-bit bios
______ area, so shadowing the bios will only confuse your poor little Win32 crap. Someone just corrected me
______ too, that video cards don't use 8-bit ROMs anymore; instead, they use flashy little EEPROMs that actually
______ run faster than your SDRAM. I've even heard that shadowing your video bios will only partially shadow
______ that bios thingy, and without the whole thing, your computer will sound as stupid as I do right now.
______ This will probably also lead to some crashes or something, so if you want a computer that actually works
______ unlike mine, keep video bios shadowing off.

CXXX-blah-blah-whatever Shadowing - I'm not sure what's so important in those memory addresses, but you
______ should never shadow anything into the RAM. With modern FSB speeds, it's quicker to look for data in
______ PCI slot thingies than in the RAM. I benchmarked my computer with Quake 2 a long time ago or something,
______ and yes - I had so little of a life that I actually kept switching between shadowing and not-so shadowy
______ shadowing, and I concluded that shadowing did indeed slow down the game by 0.2 fps or something.
______ And what logical gamer would actually want that?

HDD S.m.a.r.t. Capability - Smile, you're on Candid Camera... God, I hated that show before it was brought back
______ from the dead, and I have no idea why I just thought of it. Anyhew, that SMART thing stands for the Self
______ Monitoring Analysis and Reporting thingy that comes in your hard drive. It warns you when your hard
______ drive is about to blow up like popcorn or something, and since I can't find a performance difference between
______ having it on and off, I for one tend to keep it enabled. Funny though - out of all my hard drive meltdowns,
______ I haven't been warned of a single one... There could be some compatibility problems with this SMART
______ thingy. I don't think you'll have any conflicts with hardware at bootup, but you never know... Well, at least,
______ I never know. I can never tell whether my computer is malfunctioning or whether its constant rebooting is
______ just a regular part of its day - not like there's a difference between the two of them to me anymore.

Report No FDD for Windows95 - When I sort of accidentally tore apart my PS/2 controller on my
______ motherboard, I started to get really annoyed at that stupid message in Windows95 that kept telling me
______ I had no mouse connected. I was too stupid at the time to check off that box to never let that pop-up box
______ see the light of day again, and as always, I was arrogant about my advanced knowledge of the keyboard
______ (you know, like that CTRL-ESC crap for the Windows button and that CTRL-E crap for Explorer). My brother
______ always makes fun of me for how smart I think I am all because I hate using a mouse, and he', well, right about
______ that... but that's not the issue right now. If you enabled this No Floppy Drive option, Windows won't bug
______ you if you ripped out your floppy controller or something last night. Believe me, it's possible. I've
______ watched it happen, and for once it wasn't me who screwed over the computer royally in white.

MPS Version Control Thingy for OS - I really have no idea what MPS is for outside of Economics class, and I
______ guess I don't need to care. Hell - I still don't know what SOS stands for. Well, I know MPS has something to
______ do with those Intel Xeon processors that are infinitely too expensive for me to afford with my 50 cents
______ per week budget. Anyhew, if you've got a multiprocessor system that's relatively new, you're supposed
______ to keep this option on MPS version 1.4 and not that 1.1 crap. Don't ask me why, but 1.4 probably has
______ better compatibility or something for all you rich bastards out there with Quake3 playing on Xeon LAN
______ parties or something... Well, technically, my family is rich too. I just buy stuff that aren't. You know,
______ my entire community is rich. For Christ's sakes, I live in Oakville, Ontario which is like the, uh -
______ Oakville, Ontario of Canada. We're filthy rich, spoiled bastards, yet it's simply amazing how many of
______ us youths pretend like we're not. But that's a story for another day of whining by the no-name
______ modder.

Delay IDE Initial (sec) - Try to keep this setting as low as it can go. The lower, the faster your computer boots
______ itself. The problem is, some guys like me sorta go, um - 'oops' when we're in a sticky situation, and we sort
______ of, um - go early... We miss the proper boot time, and then we get booted out of the bedroom to test ourselves
______ out in Pineapple Pie or something. The same goes with your IDE drives when your computer starts, so if
______ they need more time to prepare, increase the delay for a very special night.

Assign IRQ for VGA - Yes, I know - I'm not funny one bit. I'm quite sickning and annoying, aren't I? But so are so
______ many of us computer freaks. I've seen my kind - we're all psychos putting our aggressions into games
______ and programming competitions and judging other computer freaks as good or evil. But not all of us
______ have come to terms with our sexuality. Not only do we geeks not get any, but we actually choose to not
______ get any. I'm probably never going to go out on a goddam date in my life knowing me. Where the hell are
______ my little, marching soldiers anyways? The first and only time I had to jerk off was when I was doing
______ too many sit-ups by the TV back in Grade 1o, watching Oprah or something, for Christ's sake... well,
______ anyhew, enough of my end of adolescence sexual frustrations. Make sure you assign an IRQ number
______ to your VGA cards. Today's 3d accelerators just love to hog your resources. 3dfx's Voodoo5 steals
______ electricity with its stupid, extra plug. nVidia steals our computer's souls by overheating it to hell -
______ literally. And every card made since the days of my beloved PCX2 MatroxM3d needs an IRQ number
______ to run properly, so give it a hell yeah and say hi to its little soldiers.

 

- Chipset Features Setup Place in Your Thingy -

Now this is where the fun begins... but let's take this time to reminensce (um... spellcheck?...) about my little Grade 11 woes. Back in those days, I had a single web-page: a Chemistry ISU page with a tiny, little PowerVR news site in the corner. Well, I also had my Cows are Taking Over the World page from Grade 9, but that doesn't count, so... Those were the good, old days when I was writing my stories within Starcraft campaign maps. You see, I still count Starcraft along with Master of Orion II as the only two, well done computer games in history. Sure, I played Hardball 3 and probably Doom a few dozen times or so, but only out of complete boredom. I never played Starcraft much, but... I was just awed by the AI in Broodwars. I loved the game balance, and the simple graphics that actually ran on my computer... I give hats off to any programmer who can get a game to not crash on my CPU... Anyhew, grade 11 was also the worst year of French year I've had in my life. I remember my ISU for the course, and God, did it seem so omnivous (huh? That's not the word I wanted...) or something for the time, towering over me: I had to do a 10 or 15 minute play in French dialogue when I barely could speak the word, "bonjour" (honestly! I'm still ashamed of saying that word because I have no French accent whatsover). The presentation went just swell; I forgot some of my lines, but as soon as that Christmas hat was put on my buddy's head, the audience sighed in joy... but that's as far as the happiness went, because I remember that half of my group was real pissed at my friend for forgetting his lines, and real pissed at me for letting him join the group... I also remember the only good day of French: culture day. That's when we would bring in a whole bunch of French meals into class to gorge on near Christmas. I forget what dish I brought, though I remember frantically searching for a toutiere pie or something in Loblaws. However, I sadly remember the drink I brought. It was a litre of Sprite, and for some odd reason, my mom made me keep it outside the fridge - probably so I wouldn't forget it the next morning. But when I brought it to school... I tasted it, and - um - it was not so good. My friend, who didn't notice that I brought the Sprite, then sorta complained to me that the Sprite was, well - flat. Damn. I didn't say anything, but God, was I embarassed. I probably ended up drinking that whole Sprite bottle just so no-one else could taste my misery... Well, me often complain that I hate speaking French (no offense to francophones, though), but that's not the real reason why I hated all French classes during my years. I'm just really afraid of talking about stuff I barely have no clue what I'm talking about... or, perhaps more honestly, and as selfish as it sounds - I think we all hate talking if we just don't know enough to win the conversation...

SDRAM CAS Latency Time - This little delay thingy talks about how long it takes your SDRAM to respond
______ to a command after it sorta receives it. And just like in life, after we ask a question, we don't really want
______ the person we're asking to take 6 or so seconds just to start replying, so keep this setting as low as it can
______ go, usually at the setting of 2. However, if a guy we're talking to responds too quickly to our response,
______ they may start swearing at us or something because they didn't listen to everything we said. Same goes
______ for CAS latency - if 2 is too fast of a setting, set it to 3 for more stable performance.

Bank 0/1 or 0/2 or 4/5 or whatever DRAM Timing - I know we all know what banks are here, otherwise
______ we wouldn't count ourselves computer geeks and actually visit this site. Well, for those who screwed up
______ their bios and am only reading this site in hope they fix the problem before their daddykins finds out, the
______ banks are the slots you put RAM into, with 0/1 and stuff usually your SDRAM Pc-66/100/133 area. And
______ just like the CAS latency, we want to make sure our RAM in each slot responds to CPU instructions as
______ fast as it can, so I keep my all my Bank DRAM Timings at Turbo. But don't take my word for it; I'm
______ guessing that Turbo speed is the fastest, but who knows? Maybe setting your SDRAM Banks to 8ns and
______ your EDO slots to FP/EDO 60ns will get your Quake3 to run that oh-so ever important frame rate almost
______ 0.0002 fps faster. And if your computer ends up spitting out your RAM after setting the settings this
______ high, default back to SDRAM 10ns or... uggh, I shudder at this setting - medium speed timing...

SDRAM Cycle Length - Okay dokay, believe it or not, I am actually not very good at computer crap. Not that
______ you can blame me - I'm only in lowly high school right now, and I'm too lazy to try to be smart and read
______ a whole bunch of bios crap on the internet to show off. Nope - I'm sort of making up all of the crap on this
______ page as I go along, so I'm going to guess that the SDRAM Cycle Length controls... um , how long it takes
______ the SDRAM to complete a cycle and reset itself?... Ummm... okay, nevermind. I just know this: the lower
______ the cycle length, the faster your RAM does that latency timing stuff, the faster your burst transfer
______ completes itself or something, and the faster your DRAM actually gets off its lazy butt and does its
______ homework for you. So I keep this setting at 2, not that I know what 2 actually stands for. But at least it's a
______ hell of a lot faster than "3" or whatever... well, um - that's what I'm pretty sure of, at least...

DRAM Read Pipeline - Okay, me probably won't spend much time on this one. Here's the basic law of computers:
______ if you've got a pipeline built into your hardware, use it. Why wouldn't you want your RAM to actually
______ read data on time from all across the mainboard? So unless you're an overclocking freak who thinks it's
______ okay to sacrifice every hardware optimization in your chipset just to get that extra 5.0001 MHz out of
______ your CPU, keep this setting enabled, please.

SDRAM Cycle Time (Tras/Trc or something) - Hmmm... just got back from a family discussion, in which
______ I tried telling them that I hate pissing while wearing pants with flies, because at home, holding up the
______ toilet seat while pissing ain't a very good combination. And then somebody just had to brag how they
______ can aim perfectly into the hole in the seat. And mean, I know it's human nature in us all, but must we brag
______ about everything?... Well, anyhew, This setting is sort of like the latency ones above, except this one
______ controls something called Row Active Time (Ras) if I remember properly, and something called
______ Row Cycle Time (RC). I don't know much besides that, except that the shorter the time the RAS and
______ the RC take to complete a cycle, the faster your RAM pretends to be. So keep this setting at its lowest,
______ which is usually 5/6 or something, unless your computer starts dying on you like that buggy, Microsoft
______ Easter Egg called Windows.

SDRAM Leadoff Command - This leadoff command thingy controls how long it takes your computer to access
______ data from some sort of burst transfer in your RAM. Keeping this setting at its lowest setting of 3 is a lot
______ better than keeping it at 4, as long as you're hungry enough to show off that fps counter of yours
______ to your buddy-buddies.

SDRAM Bank Interleave - Too bad me don't have this feature on me bios, otherwise me would just love
______ screwing my computer up with it... Interleaving your banks means while one SDRAM chip is refreshing
______ itself, another SDRAM chip in your system will be used and accessed and crazy crap like that. There's never
______ a dull moment in that computer of yours - oh woo hoo... It's sort of like dating in high school - one night,
______ you go out ith lover, and while they're stil asleep, you go access another. Simle philosophy, eh? Well,
______ actually - maybe it's more suited to university or something, but... So make sure you keep this setting
______ enabled for a good time. But what about that 2-bank, 4-bank option here for that enabled setting? If you've
______ got 16 or 32 MB SDRAM chips, you have to set this option to 2 bank to make sure your RAM doesn't blow.
______ If you have 64/128/256 MB chips or those massive 512 ones I've never seen but with prodigal eyes, you've
______ got a 4-bank system and feel free to overclock your RAM to hell with that 4-bank option.

SDRAM RAS-to-CAS Delay - Okay, just looked up what CAS means, and, um, does anyone here have a better
______ online dictionary, because what the hell is a Column Address Stobe?... Well, anyhew, this RAS-to CAS
______ setting determines how long the delay is to get a signal from the Row Address Strobe crap thingy to that
______ CAS crap thingy... hmm, who the hell comes up with these stupid terms anyhew? From some bored out
______ of their mind, hardware programmer trying to show off his vocabulary to get a date for the first time?
______ Can't we call RAS what we want, like ______ "random-ass-sucker" or something?... uggh - if only I were
______ in power; then the English language will never be the same... well, anyhew, the shorter the delay is, the
______ faster your RAM reads and writes, so keep this setting at 2 or anything lower if you can.

SDRAM RAS Precharge Time - Now don't ask me why the RAM needs to precharge of what it has to recharge.
______ I don't know if it needs to charge more power, or more data, or more semen to keep the night warm. I just
______ know that the shorter it takes to sweat the room, the faster your frames per second will run. So although
______ I honestly am the type to wait for marriage before sticking my tongue in one's chastity belt keyhole or
______ something, I do keep this setting at 2 just to make myself feel like a stud... uggh - God, am I pathetic. For
______ Christ sakes, I'm getting a goddam rise out of bios tweaks...

Cache Rd (Read) + CPU Write Pipeline - Remember IvanF's law of pipelines? The Bios is like a box of
______ chocolates - you never know who you're going to get. Anyhew, don't we all want our caches to read?
______ Though we all want our CPUs to write? Then stand by me, America - vote for IvanF. Vote for your future,
______ vote for Mycrowsoft and enable this stupid, little option that I don't think anyone with an IQ over 24
______ can do without. And as far the millions of North Americans I've just excluded, you might as well keep this
______ option on for the hell yeah of it.

Cache Timing - I know we all know what caching is, yet how many of us can actually explain it in terms
______ someone can understand? It's almost like we brag to others how much we know about the computer, yet
______ we don't even understand caching well enough to let a smart layman figure it out. I've suffered from the
______ Caching Complex a few times in discussions, and God, did I ever feel stupid. We only have an image, a
______ shadow of caching, and just a few actually know what it is without referencing it in their computer bible...
______ So vhat is caching? Umm... It's like buffering... um, no... it's like, fetching data and preparing it before the
______ computer needs it?.... umm... still off... it's like, storing data in case it's used again?... ah, crap, hell. I'll be
______ like everyone else and say screw yourself and find it out somewhere else. Just make sure you keep this
______ feature on the fastest setting, otherwise some computer jerk is going to come along and laugh at you
______ for not knowing what a cache is...

Video Bios Cacheable - I used to be fickle or whatever en0ugh to keep this option on. Afterall, if we cache the
______ video bios out of the ROM and into the RAM, since the RAM runs faster, shouldn't that speed up the
______ computer or something? Nope - not at all. All it did was use up more precious memory in my 24MB RAM
______ thingy, and it slowed video down a bit because programs check for the video bios in the 3d card's ROM
______ before checking it in the RAM... It's like moving from one house to another, and letting all your friends
______ have drinking panty parties at your old home. You'd be missing out on a lot of action, if you know what I
______ mean. So please don't drink and drive, and keep the video bios not cached.

System Bios Cacheable - Uggh... me... too... lazy... to... retype... crap... for... video... bios... ach... uh, I mean...
______ cche... uh... um, what the hell. Just read that crap I wrote for the video bios caching thing, because the same
______ applies here. So be all you can be, remember to always put the toilet seat down for the replacement for
______ your mommy, and keep this option disabled.

Mem /A- Hole at 15MB Address - Just to let you know, this mem hole thingy puts a gap in your RAM around
______ the 15MB mark. And what does this do? Same as a drunk guy does at a Hookers bar; screws everything up.
______ I tried enabling this setting one time, and was welcomed with a black screen of death when the computer
______ could barely even boot up the bios... This hole prevents the computer from using anything above
______ 15MB or something and gives all that precious memory to your ISA slots, so unless you've got medical
______ clearance to be insane or have some real semen on the brain, keep this option off.

AGP Aperature Size - Any video card freak knows what this does. AGP stands for Accelerator Graphics Port, and
______ for all those who are like Victor, yes - it is true; it does come in all sorts of speeds. This setting in your bios
______ controls the max amount of your system RAM that can be used to store video textures by that crappy
______ AGP, uh, crap format that Intel invented just to steal 3d gamer's hard-earned, stolen money. I keep this
______ setting at 4MB, the lowest it can go, and knowing sort of how the AGP Aperature system works, my
______ AGP should therefore by maxed out at about half that setting - something like 2MB then. Setting this at
______ anything above 32MB not only slows down the video card by not spanking its onboard DRAM enough,
______ but also because it hogs all your memory resources from everything God loves in your computer. I've
______ heard some argue that Win9x's new vgart.vxd has a little waterfall effect or something that make sure
______ system RAM is not used by textures unless direly needed, but I wouldn't recommend that anyone
______ should trust Win9x to do anything properly.

Fan On/Off on Suspend - Just like what most people think Einstein was, this is a no brainer. Keep this option
______ on to keep your CPU cool, even when your computer is on suspend / half-dying mode. Turn this option off
______ if you like to sleep with your mouth on the computer's power supply, and need the computer to be quiet
______ while its poking into you. And as for Einstein, just to let whoever keeps bugging me with this at school
______ know, he failed Calculus only because it was too easy for him. He got 150% or something in
______ every Algebra/Geometry course, and even invented almost all modern quantum physic math crap, which
______ is real crap I can't understand a word of. Maybe that's a good thing, because Einstein did say that if you
______ think you understand quantum physics, you really don't. And does that sound like the words of a stupid
______ man? I didn't think so... and if you'd excuse me, I'd like to get back to my daily banging of Bill Gates... uh,
______ I meant bashing!... heh... um, time to whip out the delete key...

On Chip USB - Most would keep the universal serial bus on, but since I don't have any USB 1.0 stuff running, I leave
______ this disabled to prevent any conflicts... I'm now going to brag about the glory days, when I remember
______ Microsoft trying to market their USB only speakers. They couldn't even do surround sound with their
______ crappy, little 12Mb bandwith, and they were about as clear as a Sound Blaster Live Value. But what shall
______ happen when USB 2.0 comes along at 400Mb or something? Unless Intel is going to delay it again and
______ pretend like they boosted it to 1Gb or something...

CPU Warning / Shutdown Temperature - This CPU warning thing tells you on screen when your overclocked
______ to hell CPU is about to explode into melted jello. Since I actually am one of those rare nerds who keeps
______ their CPU at its actual speed, I never see my CPU reach the 50 degrees celsius mark or something. The
______ shutdown temperature will, well - shut down your computer if it reaches something like 56 degres
______ celsius or something. So unless you've just got to keep fragging those faggots in online Half-Life or
______ Rogue Spear or something, even when your CPU is now hotter than the girls (or guys...) you do it to in
______ bed, keep these threshold markers at a low temp.

PCI 2.1 Compliance - I think this option allows your ISA stuff to be buffered instead of being N'Sync (God, I
______ hate them... but doesn't every computer geek think the same?) with the PCI. We all know that the PCI
______ travels leaps and bounds faster or something than the ISA bus, so keeping them out of sink by enabling
______ this PCI 2.1 spec option is a must. Never turn this option off unless you want to be spanked by the
______ computer club at school, which is what a lot of you guys out there are probably hoping for right now...
______ well, I am at least...

Read Around Write - Oh, what a rosy, joy-joy name. It reminds me of songs like Ring around a posy, which I was
______ never apt enough to sing. God, I hate my singing. Besides elementary school concerts (and please don't
______ remind me of those...), the only time I've sung before an audience was last year in Grade12 US History
______ class. I stayed up all night memorizing two verses of the American National Anthem, and all in hope of
______ looking like an idiot in front of the class the next day. And when I did sing it before a live studio audience...
______ well, I was surprised someone complimented that I did not croak once. And I think that's quite a step up
______ for me and my career... Well, anyhew, enabling read around write will let your CPU do reading functions
______ from RAM in any order it feels like. Letting the brains of your computer pick a schedule is a lot better
______ than letting the brawn do it, so leave this option on unless you're getting compatibility problems or you
______ just want to spite the powers that be.

8-bit I/O Recovery Time - I love ISA cards. Me want a new ISA modem. Me want Sebastian's Sound Card
______ RAM for my Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold ISA. However, these ISA sluts do the computer a lot slower
______ than PCI prostitutes do, so the system bus puts a 3.5 cycle or something delay between reading, I think,
______ from the PCI slots and the ISA thingies. Try to keep this setting at N/A to keep the delay at that 3.5
______ cycle thingy, which is as low as it can go. But that screws up my computer more than I do in a day, so
______ I'm forced to keep this setting at 2, if I can remember properly, which adds 2 cycles to the 3.5 I mentioned
______ earlier to really make my computer think slower than I do... and wait - that's another thing...

16-bit I/O Recovery Time - Yup, that's another thing - I hate IQ tests! I remember being so jealous of
______ Meagan and Brendan way back in Grade 2 or something. They got into bloody enrichment courses, and
______ when I took the goddam IQ test, I failed miserably! I came back with a vengeance in Grade 4, and got a
______ passing grade in my IQ test, but then the stupid arrogant bastards behind those desks told me I was
______ intelligent, but not goddam enriched. Oh yeah, sure - Gifted my ass! If I go to therapy, I'm blaming those
______ goddam, fucking enrichment testers for every goddam thing that's gone wrong in my life! And now with
______ Conor reguarly doing IQ tests, and Sebastian having something like a 150 IQ, look how stupid me
______ and my insignificant 110 or something on the charts look! My brain is as lame as my penis, for
______ Christ's sake!... Oh - um, yeah, about that 16-bit I/O thing - it's the same as the 8-bit one above, so keep it
______ at N/A if you can, otherwise you'll have to set it higher and add more cycles to your PCI and ISA wait
______ delay or something.

SDRAM Precharge Control - My html editor is starting to freeze from my crappy RAM, so I'd better keep this
______ one short. This precharge setting asks whether you want the SDRAM to control its refreshes, or if you
______ want its CPU mommy to do it for it. Keep this option enabled to let the SDRAM wet itself and perform for
______ you a hell of a lot better, otherwise for more stability, you're going to have to bring in the CPU to wipe
______ its ass.

Passive Release - I was never really sure what this passive release thingy does, but I think it allows your PCI
______ cards to be read at the same time your ISA cards are. So if you want optimal performance, keep this
______ enabled... now getting back to the important stuff from above: wiping one's ass. I don't think I learned
______ how to clean up for myself until I was 8 or 9 years old. I know how embarrassing that sounds, but I was
______ okay with it. My mom would stroke my anus with that cotton soft tissue paper until peer pressure
______ forced me to learn it myself. And I don't think I was very accurate with my hands when I first started
______ training, but... anyhew, this could explain my old fear of visiting the washrooms at school - at school,
______ there was no mommy to wipe and give me bliss. Then again, public washrooms are quite sick considering
______ so many guys like to jerk off on the walls and wait for the lower grades to clean it with their tongues. And
______ if you think that's sick, wait till you hear what goes on in the guy washrooms...

AGP M aster 1WS Read - Turning this option on will lead to pixellated and ugly graphic artifacts on screen
______ everywhere, but since everyone screws their nVidia's cards graphics anyhew just to get a decent
______ framerate, who gives a Yeltsin damn? Normally, the AGP thingy waits 2 little cycles or clicks or
______ whatever until accessing data from itself, but you might as well enable this feature to cut the wait
______ time between reads by half.

AGP Master 1WS Write - You might as well turn this thingy on too; there's little point in having a faster AGP read
______ if it can't write to its best friend at the same speed. You can disable this feature if you get crappy
______ wireframe or something artifacts screwing up your screen, but logically, who besides those trying to
______ prove how great their graphics and 3d card are, would actually notice a little, weird line jetting out of the
______ corner of their screen? I thought we bought games to play them - not to show them off, but I'm too
______ bored to get cynical right now...

USWC Write Processing - This stupid USWC thingy may look like a Boston Ivey league university or something,
______ but it really stands for Uncacheable Speculative Write and something thingy. What it does is sort of
______ compresses some 3d card data into 64-bit crap to save bandwith for the more important crap. And
______ although this feature works great for my brother's G200 and its tiny little AGP1x bandwith, USWC
______ actually slows down performance with those AGP8x crap things that gamers actually believe run faster
______ than the old AGP2x. I used to drool every time I heard that AGP4x name, but after seeing all those
______ rigged benchmarks that test bandwith and not gaming performance, I told Intel to screw itself and
______ went out and screwed myself by buying a PCI card. In real life situations, AGP8x and PCI run at
______ practically the same speed - it's just that you can't show off and brag about PCI to your friends. But
______ of course, they all ooh and awe when you start drooling over your own AGP8x... And by the
______ way, I'm only bitter at AGP8x or whatever fans, because I'm bitter at myself for once being stupid
______ enough to have faith in AGP4x...

PCI Pipeline - Have I talked about this feature before? Probably, but I'm too lazy to go read my old crap and find
______ out. So just to tell you, every time you read the word pipeline in your bios, it's probably a safe bet that the
______ dog that runs the yard would enable it. Turning this feature on probably enables byte merging or
______ something, which is sort of like compression. If two bytes of data can be merged, like an 8-bit and a
______ 16-bit piece of crap, then this pipeline thingy will squash them together into one 32-bit bitch to
______ save some bandwith. And besides the occassional blowing up of your computer, there shouldn't be any
______ side effects to this feature (God, my spelling sucks - how the hell do you right occasional anyhew?...
______ uh, I meant, 'write'... oops...). The only side effects I ever get these days come from drinking that
______ Buckley's medicine crap. But at least unlike flu shots, it actually works and gets rid of disease. It doesn't
______ taste awful, but it splits your throat in two literally, and scares those Nazi-like, pesky germs back into
______ hiding. It's like a spanking from your parents so you won't do something nasty again - although I think a
______ lot of us would actually want more spankings from our parents than we got...

Flash Bios Protection - I've only tried flashing my bios once: I was sick and tired of my 430VX not
______ being able to handle 64MB of SDRAM, so I, uh - sort of started flashing it with 430TX or whatever tits.
______ It didn't work so well, but surprisingly, my computer worked kinda less crashy after that, and a little
______ bit more flimsy... Anyhew, make sure you keep this option enabled in case your 8-year old
______ cousin or something, thinking that he's smarter than you at the computer, decides to get a little
______ attention from his or her parents by flashing your bios with one from '76.

Spread Spectrum - If you have the smart spectrum option for this thingy, make sure that it's enabled.
______ This spread spectrum controls the electromagnetic interference in your computer, me thinks. Your
______ bios clock or something can at times mess up your hardware if you're pumping too much energy into
______ your circuits in hope of overclocking to hell and back. If you have the smart option, it will turn off your
______ AGP and PCI crap when they're not in use, thus reducing damage done by that electromagnetic stuff
______ from The Matrix. If you don't have that option, you can keep this disabled - your 3dcard may only last
______ 6 months instead of those 7 that you were planning to keep it, but as long as its a nVidia card that's
______ burning in hell, me c'est happy. Keeping this option enabled with reduce damage to your bits and
______ pieces, but will slow your soldiers down, cause some early crashes, and leave you giving a pep talk to
______ your parts. And who besides your parents would want that?

Auto Detect DIMM/PCI Clk - This is probably the same as the spread spectrum option above. Keep this
______ disabled for better performance and system stability, and keeping this option on is like wearing
______ thermal underwear in the winter. And as sad as it sounds, yes - I have discussed this topic in school...
______ Although my little kahuna won't feel cold when I wear a heater down below, over time the heat would
______ sort of turn me into a, um - a woman with a sagging breast down below, to put it mildly. And who
______ besides your parents would want that?

DRAM Read Latch Delay - Whenever you hear the word delay, don't hesitate to run. Keep this option disabled,
______ because it adds a delay before your SDRAM is accessed, just to make sure that your RAM doesn't have some
______ sort of weird timing mechanism thingy. Most PC133 and PC100 and that Pc66 crap that I still love, all have
______ the same timing in a way, so unless you get crashes, keep this setting off. And you know what sort of pisses
______ me off at lunch, to put it nicely? Some guy who craps beside me keeps bragging that his computer needs
______ special RAM to run, and that regular SDRAM doesn't work in his system. What the hell is he talking
______ about? What special RAM? Name it! He keeps the rest of us in the dark by not letting us name his RAM.
______ And we all know that naming an object gives us power over it, so we can never brag against his special
______ or whatever RAM because we hve no idea what it is. We can't even make fun of him because we're the
______ ones who feel dumb - he has found a way to know nothing about RAM, yet seem smarter than the rest
______ of us geeks. It's probably just EDO DIMMs or something crappy like that, parity or non-parity or I don't
______ know what. But I'm a computer nerd - we all have compulsive disorders to be nosy and find out
______ everything just so we don't look stupid to ourselves. And after reading all my bios rants, you guys can
______ probably decide, from what I just said, what is the real reason I'm pissed off.

DRAM Interleave Time - Interleaving sucks prostitutes, and just for the record, I was kind of stunned when
______ someone in my grade that I've never talked to, claimed that the perfect job for me would be a pimp.
______ Hmm, he's never read my web-page - how did he know my future plans? I mean, I was shocked, because
______ his guess was right - a computer programmer is simply a digital pimp artist, who makes their own
______ perfect goddesses like Pygmalion did in that Greek myth. Anyhew, enough of bragging about my
______ Greek myth knowledge crap (although most of you out there are probably assuring yourselves that you
______ know more about Pygmalion than I just told you about) - getting back to the taskman at hand, for this
______ bios option, make sure you select the lowest delay setting, like zero ms if you can. If you select
______ anything higher, than you'll be stuck with a computer that moves slower than the plot of Gone with
______ the Wind.

Fast R-W Turn-Around - My Chemistry teacher used to say, when it doubt, use 'PV vs nRT'. Not sure how many of you know what that means... But when it comes to bios tweaking crap, I'm sure we all know that when in doubt, assume R means R and W means W... and, uh... oops, I meant R means Read and W means Write, or something like that. And what this little R-W turn thingy does is controls the delay when the RAM switches from read mode to write mode or something like that. Keep this feature enabled to speed up all your little RAM processes, unless your computer starts frying like mine has seemed to do for no apparent reason this year.

Byte Merge - ummmm.... didn't I talk about Byte merging yet? I thought I did, but I can't find it anywhere on this site... Well, okay dokay. Time to get my hands greasy all over again. In case I already did review this feature, I'll keep this section relatively short. Make sure Byte merging is enabled, because then it'll happily marry all those 8-bit and 16-bit bytes together into some sort of lopsided, one-balled, transvestite of a 32-bit byte thingy. In a way, it's like a form of data compression which in the end, could free up a lot of extra bandwith.

AGP Driving Force - Cool... I went to the golf thingy driving range for the first time a few weeks ago. I saw one of my classmates there, and chickened out of talking to him, just like I always do, but I won't talk about that... Anyhew, I'm quite proud of what I did that day. I mean, I actually hit that ball thing on my first try! That's pretty damn good! And how far did I hit it?... uh... that's not really that important right now... The second time was the charm though. I didn't hit the grass, I could say that at least... And who cares if I hit my foot? Shit happens, you know. And to be honest, I think I hit my foot farther than I hit that golf ball on my first try... Anyhew, this AGP driving force is usually set to auto or the default of DA (which means 218 in hexadecimal mode thingy), but if you've got a really fast video card, you might as well keep pumping this value up. I've heard GeForces can take somewhere up to the 230 or 240 mark to allow better overclockability. I've never tried it though, and besides... I suck so bad at hexadecimal stuff right now, that I would have no idea anyhew on how to convert those values to, well, hex stuff... Oh, and don't get me started on Tarot cards. Don't know why I just thought of that, though... Well, start me up on it later, when I have some room to write...

CPU Drive Strength - Okay, I have room now. For God's sake, I used to have nothing against Tarot cards, but why the hell is practically every girl in my grade doing that kind of crap right now? It's like the damn equivalent of Pokemon and Hockey pogs for girls trying to be women. Sure, I believe in the Collective Unconscious. I believe in fate. I even believe in goddam Atlantis, and half the stuff that came out of Edger Cayce's mouth. But why the hell do people think that of all people, they themselves can put all their trust into little cards and little Luigi or whatever you call them boards. I mean, when I see them do readings, it seems like a trendy way to do Psycho Therapy. You get a bad card, for instance, and then they ask you if something is bothering you... And of course something is goddam bothering you! You wouldn't be goddam human if you weren't... And anyhew, that's my rant for this day. Back to annoying bios tweaks and crap like that... Increasing the CPU drive strength does the same as the AGP one: the higher the value, the more stable the overclocking. Just don't set it too high, though, otherwise your computer will burn up faster than a... uh, well... a burning thing...

MD Drive Strength - Oh, crap. Yet another one of these stupid, movies for guys who like movies, drive strength thingies... Anyhew, MD stands for memory data line or something like that. So since I'm getting sick of pumping this iron, whatever that means, I'll get over this strength feature quickly. The higher the value, the higher you can overclock your memory bus. Good enough for you? Fine. I'm going back to sleep now...

SDRAM Page Closing Policy - Crap. Rain's coming through my window. Can't go to sleep when I keep swallowing down acid rain... By the way, it's Canada Day today, and the weather just looks oh-so spiffy. It's raining so hard that I don't think I'll see a single firework this year... Anyhew, I don't understand this SDRAM Page Policy thingy very well, and right now me don't care. All I know is that the less precharged banks, the faster the system.

Master Priority Rotation - Okay... I've never seen this feature before, so I'll have to trust Adrian Wong's little rendition of it on the piano... Let's see here. According to his bios tweaks, you have three choices here: 1 PCI, 2 PCI, and 3 PCI. Sounds like a tea-cup song to me. I used to sing that in school, you know... In my last year of high school, I mean. And since everyone knew about the Oedipal Complex by that time, they did not want to be reminded that here was my handle, and here was my spout... Well, basically, the lower the PCI value, the higher the CPU priority is. For instance, 1 PCI means that the CPU can write to the PCI any time it likes, thus slowing the PCI bus down. 3 PCI means that the PCI slots have 3 times more priority than the CPU, thus slowing the whole CPU process down. So if you've got a ton of PCI cards, go for the higher values. If not, give your CPU a nice, warm kit-kat break and make your games run a bit smoother by picking 1 PCI.

 

- PNP / PCI Configuration Thingies for those Hopeful Below the Heart -

PCI Dynamic Bursting - I honestly don't really understand this feature that much. I mean, enabling it will allow the PCI write buffer to be used all the time, while disabling it allows the buffer to be used only whenever its free. I personally would assume that when the hands are free and the mouth is full, everything flows a lot better... but, uh... nevermind. Anyhew, just enable this feature. Don't ask me why. It just works. Some positions are just meant to exist, no questions asked...

CPU to PCI Write Buffer - This is quite a strange feature since I've always thought disabling this Write Buffer would be better. I mean, buffers usually slow stuff down because they act like the 6th man of a basketball team - a usually unwanted substitution. Sort of like that 3rd man on a gay date, you know... Disabling this feature allows the CPU to directly write to the PCI bus, which for some odd reason, slows things down. Vhy? Because the PCI bus runs at a far slower speed than the CPU. Enabling this buffer will allow the CPU to never stop doing it's little calculations, which in turn, allows your little games to run a hell of a lot smoother.

PCI Delayed Transaction - Hell, I've never seen this feature before in my life, but I'm really starting to like it. Vhy? Because it deals with the ISA bus, my favourite thing since Sony stole the Firewire and renamed as some goddam i.Link or something... and the sad thing is, one of my friends still believes that Sony actually invented that thing. I've gotta slap some sense into him one of these days... Anyhew, it's better to enable this PCI delay thingy because if you don't, the PCI slots will run at practically the same speed as the ISA ones. Enabling it will allow the PCI to continue working on other crap while it waits for the ISA slots to finish their, uh... you know, private stuff...

PCI Master 0 WS Wait - This is just another one of those ho-hum, little delay thingies that, uh, delay stuff before you read or write data to the PCI stuff... uh, yeah. That's a good way to explain it... Try to set this delay as low as possible, with 0 ms as the optimal solution thingy. I don't think I have to say anymore, except that for some damn reason, I always end up cutting my hands on my towercase. Every single damn time I open it up... You'd think I would throw that thing away by now, but nooo... after 6 or 7 bloody years of scrapes and tears, I still hug that Mini AT every night before I skip to bed... ugggh... don't remind me of that, though...

PCI Access Retry - Now this is one, little feature that I've grown to love... You see, back in those glory Quake 2 days when I would overclock, and underclock, and overclock again just to pull off a steady 11fps in that game, one of the features that would boggle my mind most was this PCI Acess Retry thingy. When it was enabled, I think it sped stuff up, but it was hard to tell, you know. I sure had to squint a lot to tell a difference between 11 and 11.1 fps, you know... Anyhew, now I know that this PCI Retry thingy is a good thing, and knowing is half the battle. If the PCI to CPU buffer gets screwed up at some point, enabling this feature will allow the PCI bus to make a new buffer and fix it's mistake... And as for the skipping I mentioned before... uggh... like I said, don't remind me of that. When I went up to get the Most Likely to be Rich award at my grad formal, I skipped all the way up... uggggh... my friends just stared at me, wondering what the hell I was doing... it was one of those little girl with a lollipop skips, and I don't know why I did it. Like I told my friends, I couldn't think of anything better to do... The next time up, I did a cool Rocky dance and I have no problem with that... So, um... Just don't remind me of me prancing like a fairy the first time up, okay dokay?...

PNP OS Installed - Hmmm... now this feature has caused quite a litttle ruckus in my life... Since I use Microsoft's crap Plug and Pray OSes, I've always kept this PnP OS feature on. And one little day, my computer stopped working, and me couldn't figure out why. So I played around with my RAM. No problem there. Then I played with my PCI cards. No problem there. Then I played hard with my dingaling. Considering how small it is, there's a tiny problem there... And then I came to the bios, and finally disabled this PnP feature for the hell of it. And what do you know? The damn thing worked. Apparently, allowing the bios to control the ACPI and all thos IRQs and stuff like that can increase compatibilities. And besides, it's smarter to keep this feature disabled, otherwise we'd actually be trusting a Microsoft program to handle... well... our most prized possessions...

Resources Controlled By - Every one of us little hotshot computer hackers love to toy around with our computers, busting and rusting it every chance we get. But I for one have rarely ever tried to tackle this resource control thingy, because the default auto feature just handles it so damn well. But if you do have compatibility problems, go ahead and take a crack at this. Just keep in mind that Legacy ISA thingies require specific DMA things to run, while Plug and Pray cards do fine with anything.

PCI IRQ Activated By - Strangely, I've never bothered to look into this feature either, just like that Resource Controlled thingy one above. Somehow, learning this kind of crap just doesn't give us computer knickerboxers the kind of bragging rights that that PCI Master Delay Transaction thingy or whatever it's called thingy does. But just to let you know, if you've got a lot of PCI cards, it's best to activate them by level, which means something like voltages. If you've got a bunch of ISA cards, edge is supposed to work better by using a single voltage or something like that.

AGP Master 1 WS Write - Hmmm... I know I already talked about this, but... now me have a new dilemma, and it ain't about the spelling of cottage cheese... I assume it's better to keep this option on, but it's hard to tell why. What this feature does is puts a delay between each write that the AGP board does. The problem is, when you disable this, does it have a 0 WS wait, or does it increase it? I don't know yet, since I don't have an AGP board to try this out. But go ahead - do your little benchmarks with your jam and thumb, and report back to your twigs and berries which is the best position to twist.