tweaks and tune-ups to increase system performance, excerpted from a 12/00 smartcomputing magazine article titled Working With BIOS Settings....
"Features & Settings
Your system’s BIOS is the software “heart” that lets your computer function. Some of the settings might respond differently to the hardware on your system, and some may be incompatible, causing potentially serious issues. Furthermore, not all of these settings are available in all BIOS versions. We’re presenting a compilation of several commonly found settings that are available in different versions of several manufacturers’ BIOSes. You may not find these particular features in your BIOS.
Gate A20—Adjusts how the system uses memory above 1MB. Enable this setting to gain a slight performance improvement in most cases.
AGP aperture size—If you are using an AGP video card, adjusting the aperture size will give improved graphics performance. Try setting this to half the value of the RAM in your system, but you might want to experiment because other settings might work better.
Memory—If your system is working correctly, it might be best to leave this alone. You may realize some performance gains by adjusting these settings to the exact settings of your current RAM, but be especially careful configuring memory.
Antivirus Protection—If you have a decent, up-to-date antivirus program, disable this BIOS feature for fewer headaches. This feature prevents programs from writing to your boot sector and your partition table. However, this can also prevent legitimate access, such as when installing some software packages.
Quick POST—Enable this so your system will perform a faster POST, speeding up the PC’s boot time.
Boot Sequence—This determines the order in which drives are queried during the boot process to see if they contain a bootable OS. If you never boot from CD-ROM or diskette, then set this to check your hard drive, typically the C: drive, first.
Boot Up System Speed—Set this to Fast. This performs an abbreviated POST and minimizes certain wait times, to let the system proceed to the OS load faster.
Memory Parity/ECC Check—Disable this setting, unless you are looking for a slightly longer boot process that includes read/write testing of your RAM.
Palette Snoop—If you’re using an older VGA (Video Graphics Array) video card, enable this setting. If not, disable this setting.
OS Select For DRAM > 64 MB—If you are running OS/2, set this for OS/2. Otherwise, set this for Non-OS/2.
HDD S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, & Reporting Technology)—This feature detects potential failures and will notify you if you have a piece of code in your OS that can interpret messages from the SMART agent monitoring your hard drive.
Report No FDD For Win95—If you are running Windows 95 and do not have a diskette drive on your PC, set this to Yes. Otherwise, set this to No.
Cache Timing—Set this to its fastest setting.
OnChip USB—If your computer uses USB ports, set this to Enabled. If not, setting this to Disabled will free an IRQ (interrupt request line) for other devices to use.
Power Management—Lets you configure how your system behaves when turned on and left alone. If you don’t want your system to reduce power, or if you have trouble “reawakening” the system, disable this. Otherwise, configure the options that you would like. Disabling a hard drive power down can prevent some problems, especially with older hardware. You can configure power management in the OS, as well. Preeminence of the power settings between BIOS and the OS depends on the specification your BIOS supports, either ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) or APM (Advanced Power Management), and the OS you are running.
PNP OS Installed—Does your OS support Plug and Play? Set this to Yes, if you are using Win95, Win98 or Win2000. Set this to No for other OSes.
Assign IRQ For VGA—Some video cards require this to operate. If it is not needed, disabling it will free an IRQ for other use.
Init Display First—If you have an AGP video card, set this to AGP. If you are using a PCI video card, set this option to PCI Slot.
OnBoard FDD Controller—Set this to Enabled if you have a diskette drive with the cable plugged directly into the motherboard. If you do not have a diskette drive, or it is plugged into a controller card, set this to Disabled.
OnBoard Parallel Mode—Determines if your parallel port can receive data, send data, or both. ECP/EPP (extended capabilities port/enhanced parallel port) are bidirectional settings and work for most systems and for parallel port devices.
IDE Prefetch Mode—If your IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drive supports Prefetch Mode, enable it for faster read performance. Disable this only if your hard drive does not support Prefetch.
OnChip IDE First Channel—Set this to Enabled for almost all PCs. This is the controller to which your hard drive is most likely attached, unless you are using a SCSI hard drive or a secondary controller card. Even in these instances, if you have another IDE device plugged in, you might want to enable this.
OnChip IDE Second Channel—Enable this if you have any IDE devices (additional hard drives or CD-ROM drives) that are plugged into the second IDE controller on your motherboard.
PIO Settings—PIO is a standard used for transferring data to and from newer IDE hard drives. There are five settings, with 0 as the slowest rate (3.3MBps) and 4 as the fastest (16.6-MBps). Auto is fairly safe. PIO uses some of your processor for read and write operations to the hard drive. Lowering it may slow things down.
IDE Autodetection—A very useful feature, especially when installing new IDE drives in your PC. This polls the IDE channels to identify the devices. Generally speaking, when given a list of possible choices, the one with a (Y) next to it is the best selection.
Passwords—Enabling and setting passwords can help you secure your PC by requiring passwords to power up the computer, to enter the setup (BIOS configuration) of your computer, or both. Remember: Removing the CMOS battery on the motherboard will do away with the password.
Download Award's utilities (from unicore.com) to identify your BIOS, see what version you're using, and more.
CPU Cache—Possibly labeled L1, L2 and/or L3 cache. You should enable this. CPU cache is memory built into the CPU; enabling its use can dramatically improve performance.
Swap Floppy drive—By default this is disabled. This lets you quickly swap names among diskette drives, such as your A: drive changes to B: or B: to A:. This is unnecessary in most instances.
Typematic Rate Setting—Set to Enable or Disable as you see fit.
Typematic Rate—The frequency at which the keyboard repeats a keystroke. When set to 4, the key will repeat the same character four times per second.
Typematic Rate Delay—This sets the delay in milliseconds that you can hold a key down before it gets repeated. For example, when set to 500ms, you can hold down a key for one-half of a second before it starts repeating.
Video BIOS Shadowing—Your system will perform better with this setting disabled; enable shadowing only if you still use DOS mode frequently, where shadowing can improve performance.
Video BIOS Cacheable—Disable this setting. Enable it only if you still use DOS mode games where it can improve performance.
Shadow xxxxx – xxxxx—Where xxxxx - xxxxx represents the address ranges to be shadowed in RAM. These should be set to Disabled to improve system stability.
CPU Internal Core Speed, CPU Host Bus Frequency, CPU Core Voltage, and CPU Core Bus Frequency Multiplier—Each setting lets a motherboard support different types and speeds of CPU. Know what you’re doing before altering, or your PC may not boot correctly. "
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