BIOS Tweaks for a Faster PC **At Your Own Risk**

BIOS settings play an important role in speeding up your computer. They can be quite cryptic, and therefore need a bit of understanding before you can play around with them. Plus, since there are so many different versions of BIOS, your PC may not have some of the settings we are about to discuss. However, you should be able to do most of what we suggest. If your PC refuses to boot up after you've made some changes, then you may have to reset the BIOS (see Reset BIOS, lower section).

Set the AGP bus speed to 4x. The AGP bus originally ran at 1x, but as newer video cards were released it was upgraded to 2x and then recently to 4x. If you have a video card that needs a 4x bus, performance will be crippled at 2x.

Enable the Video ROM BIOS Shadow option under Shadowing options. It speeds up your computer by copying the contents of your video BIOS code from the slow ROM on which it resides to faster RAM.

Enable L1 and L2 caches of the processor, and disable ECC checking. ECC checking can take a little overhead without significant advantage.

If you use onboard graphics, assign as much memory to the Shared VGA Memory as possible, but make sure you have enough RAM on your system as well. For example, if you have 128 MB RAM, 16 MB could be used as video memory and rest as system memory.

Reduce CAS (Column Access Strobe) latency. CAS latency refers to the delay that occurs when accessing the column part of a memory address (looking at computer memory as a spreadsheet). Usually the delay is 2 to 3 cycles, depending upon your RAM speed. Most memory modules support both 2 and 3, but usually default to 3. So reducing this from 3 to 2 can result in some performance gain. However, this particular setting should be done with care, as it can crash your computer, in case your RAM doesn't support both. If this happens, then change the setting back to 3.

Besides these, there are certain other options you could play around with. For instance, if you have any ports on your PC, which you don't use, then disable them from the BIOS. For instance, if you don't have a printer, then disable the parallel port. Another option is to disable the 'Spread Spectrum Control' option. Enable 'PCI to DRAM' prefetch and 'Fast Write' under AGP options. The latter speeds up AGP access. Power saving should be enabled for those who are concerned about power consump- tion, but performance freaks should disable it.

Note: These settings are under different menus depending upon your BIOS version

BIOS Tweaks

Written By: Chris Allen
Posted: May 28, 2002, 3:01 am



With the prices of virtually anything PC related way up there it's no wonder that many people (including myself) look to soak as much juice out of our systems as possible, that's not too say I recommend anyone and everyone go out and purchase a liquid cooling kit simply to overclock your CPU or start cutting holes in your tower for better airflow because your newly overclocked memory is running a little warm, no that's a whole different article and why jump to those extreme measures without first looking at the obvious (and Free) tweaks which can and generally will, help speed things up a little or can serve as obvious bottlenecks on pumped up rigs

Booting up your system can take what seems to be an eternity to boot up, any 9x user can vouch for the fact that reboots are as common as Bill Gates making money, with all the reboots that those systems needed it would sometimes feel as though you spent more time restarting the system than you spend actually using it.

Today we are going to look at cutting some time and adding a little performance by going through your BIOS settings. The BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) is in charge of detecting, initializing and check the functionality of your systems hardware. This is the main part of your system, most people are under the impression that there O/S is the most important part of a computer, I personally am a firm believer that if your BIOS is not functioning properly you will never have proper success from there so called 'most important' part of your system.

Something I need to mention right away is that all systems are different; as each motherboard is generally different each manufacturer uses their own flavor of BIOS. The first thing you will want to do is ensure you have the newest BIOS revision installed, this is easily done off of the Manufacturers web site, the site will almost always have directions on how to run the utility, in days of old it was done through DOS usually using a utility to flash the BIOS, in the days of new, manufacturers such as MSI and ASUS actually can do this through windows and even have software to automatically update the BIOS live thanks to the Web.


So as I was saying, all boards may have a different BIOSes, a different revision and chances are yours may look a little differently and it may be worded slightly differently and it may not even have some of the options that were going to discuss. If you are unsure of some of the settings in the BIOS simply don't change them and be positive that when you are flashing the BIOS you are 100% sure that your flashing it with the proper type, revision etc or you could end up with a system you cant use.

Below we have outlined the 5 major BIOS Tweaks that will offer you a little quicker bootup time. This is not to say this list is the ultimate list, it's simply a few tweaks we thought were worth mentioning.


Disable Boot Virus Detection: Okay lets be realistic, if you get a BIOS virus the BIOSes basic capabilities would only be able to inform you that a virus is attempting to write to the boot sector, the inform is a basic message and really doesn't prevent it, it simply lets you know what is happening. By disabling this your boot up will be much quicker, I would recommend that you obtain some form of virus protection. This feature can generally be found in the Chipset features section and is easily disabled.

Enable Quick Booting: This feature will knock off a few seconds alone in your booting up stages. When you boot the system your machine goes through what is called a POST (Power on Self Test) this checks your memory as well as your devices. By disabling the memory count as well as the checking of a few devices you can easily squeeze a few additional seconds off of the clock. This option may be called Quick Booting, or Quick Power On Self Test, regardless it's best unchecked.

Disabling Logo Screens: Generally when you purchase a system from say Compaq, HP, Dell or whomever it will come sporting there logo during bootup, this is fine and dandy and doesn't really slow down boot time but lets say your troubleshooting the system, or maybe you just want to see what is going on behind the picture? Simply disable the Logo Screen in the Bios and you should be good to go.

Disable Floppy Seek: This is a good way to shave off a few seconds on the clock. When the system boots up the BIOS will check and verify that your Floppy drive is connected. This is okay if you plan on booting off a floppy disk frequently but those days are starting to fade towards the past. If you decide to use this particular tweak rest assured that this does not disable the drive within the O/S it simply disables the BIOSes seek for it.

Change the Boot Sequences: This is one of your largest time savers and can really cut down your time. This setting is primarily used to determine what drives your BIOS will check for a bootable sector. Generally you will want this to point directly to your C drive, this way it doesn't need to check your CDROM, Floppy, etc. This will change your boot time dramatically if it's searching Floppy, CD, and Hard Drive.
Well this concludes yet another system tweaking these are minimal and will generally only affect your boot time. We didn't list all or even half of the possible tweaks that are available. We do suggest that when playing with any BIOS settings you first create a backup or written document of the existing settings and a way of restoring it. We recommend that only those with a good knowledge of there PC follow through with changing any settings within your systems BIOS and will not accept responsibility to damages done to your system. We hope you have found this informational and if your looking for some additional speed tricks take a peak at a recent article entitled Windows Spring Cleaning.