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Comment #71
I think you've done a good service for novice to intermediate users with your BIOS
guide. BIOS setup info is surprisingly hard to find on the web. I would have liked to have
seen some statements on the memory timing items; SDRAM RAS to CAS, Precharge, etc. Perhaps
you will be adding these items soon. Again, good job.
Dan Banks
Hello Dan,
Yes, I will be adding those options soon. Hang in there! :)
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #72
Greetings Adrian-
I have enjoyed and have learned much from your BIOS Optimization guide. However I am a
little confused on one area, that of UDMA.
"You should only disable it for troubleshooting purposes. Note that setting this
to Auto does not enable UltraDMA or any of the slower DMA mode for IDE devices that do not
support UltraDMA. To enable the slower DMA modes 0, 1 or 2, you have to enable DMA
transfer via the OS. In Win9x, that can be done by ticking the DMA checkbox in the
properties sheet of that IDE drive."
Does that mean that enabling UDMA is Automatic in Win 9X? Or does this box need to be
checked as well.
Thanx again for your fine guide.
Ken Andersen
Sorry about your confusion there, Ken. I should have phrased it better. Actually, DMA
transfer should be enabled in the Win9x for any one of the DMA modes to work. So, you'll
also need to enable DMA transfer in Win9x in order to get UltraDMA to really work on your
system. The guide has been changed to reflect this.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #73
Your BIOS guide was informative. One setting I would like to know more about is the
aperture setting. It seems everytime I read something on it, it is different. I hear
recommended settings from 32 to 256, 1/4 RAM, 1/2 RAM, total system RAM, etc. I would
really like to know just what this feature does and accurate guidelines to get the most
benefits from it with from the video card.
For example, is the setting dependent on how much system RAM and Video card RAM? Give
lots of details. I have had a few video cards and have never seen anything about it listed
in the manuals. If this setting was that important, it seems like the video card
manufacturers would state a recommended setting. This setting seems to really be
misunderstood.
Thanks
Mike Ornellas
Hello again Mike, :)
This is probably one of the most overrated BIOS option. I have discussed with an Intel
AGP engineer and people in the industry about this matter and the general consensus is
that the size really does not matter.
There's usually a minimum size of about 8MB for most cards so you should stay above
that number. Beyond that, it doesn't really matter what you set. However, you should try
to keep the aperture size large enough to accommodate any texture storage requirements
that your games may have. An aperture size of about 64MB should be more than sufficient.
Increasing the AGP aperture size beyond that wouldn't really improve/hurt performance
but it would still be best to keep the aperture size about 64MB so that the GART table
won't be too large.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #74
Hello.
I just wanted to say that I think the BIOS optimization guide is great. I love tweaking
and messing with settings! I do have a question though. You talk about all these options,
but I have never seen them in the BIOS setup. How do you access them. I have a Gateway
computer. Do you think they limit what the user can access? I would love to be able to get
at these settings. I think my motherboard is a Intel 440BX but I am not really sure... I
don't know that much about the different kinds of motherboards.
Thanks once more for the awesome tweak guides!
Dave
Hello Dave,
The number of BIOS options present in your BIOS is entirely dependent on the
manufacturer of your motherboard. Their BIOS engineers control what options are available
to you. If you can't access them, it's because their engineers have decided not to make it
available to you. Unless you can get them to send you a BIOS that will allow you full
access to those settings or use an alternative method like a software BIOS manipulation
program or a BIOS upgrade from a specialist BIOS provider, I don't think you will be able
to access those missing BIOS options.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #75
This information is not really correct:
>Assign IRQ For USB>Options : Enabled, Disabled
>This function enables or disables IRQ allocation for the USB (Universal Serial Bus).
Enable this if you >are using a USB device. If you disable this while using a USB
device, you may have problems running >that device. However, if you don't use any USB
devices, set the option to Disabled. It will free up an >IRQ for other devices to use.
When using Windows 98 (First and Second Edition) or Windows 95 B/C with USB supplement,
you have to turn this IRQ on. The system will detect the USB even without IRQ, but the USB
will behave faulty and the system becomes unstable. IRQ sharing with ACPI (IRQ 9) or any
other device is no problem at all.
Questionable:
>CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking>Options : Enabled, Disabled
>This feature enables or disables the L2 cache's ECC checking function (if available).
Enabling this >feature is recommended because it will detect and correct single-bit
errors in data stored in the L2 >cache. It will also detect double-bit errors but not
correct them. Still, ECC checking stabilizes the >system, especially at overclocked
speeds when errors are most likely to creep in. There are those >who advocate disabling
ECC checking because it reduces performance. The performance difference is >negligible,
if at all. However, the stability and reliability achieved via ECC checking is real and
>substantial. It may even enable you to overclock higher than is possible with ECC
checking disabled. >So, enable it for added stability and reliability.
My knowledge is: There are Pentium IIs with ECC 2nd Level cache and without (I once had
a Pentium II 233 with ECC 2nd Level cache). If the 2nd Level cache does not have ECC, the
checking remains useless. When overclocking, the issues are more complicated: The old,
trusty PII 233/ECC was unstable with Cache on when overclocked to 350 (and rock-stable
with Cache off). When ECC was turned on, the behaviour was more complicated: The machine
was stable for a good amount of time, but benchmarks were very varying (say 30-60 fps in
the same benchmark). I am not aware, that all new PII and PIII have ECC Cache.
Daniel Marcial
Hello Daniel,
You are correct in your statement that without an IRQ allocated, the USB will not
behave properly. That was what I stated in the guide. However, the system will not become
unstable if you are not using an USB devices at all. In addition, some devices cannot
share IRQ so it may be important to "steal" an IRQ from the USB for such
devices. Just for the record, I have disabled IRQ for USB with my Win95 OSR 2.1 and Win98
systems with absolutely no stability issues at all.
You are also correct in your statement that not all Pentium IIs have ECC L2 cache. And
indeed, if the processor does not come with ECC L2 cache, then the feature will not work.
However, all new Pentium IIs and IIIs come with ECC L2 cache and if I'm not mistaken, all
Celerons with L2 cache use ECC L2 cache. So, for these processors, the CPU L2
Cache ECC Checking feature is quite useful.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #76
Hi,
I've read in MS' document (thanks to Ryu Connor's link) about NT and HDD settings that
32-Bits Transfer and Block Mode would be the same thing ?! Obviously these are two
different features (and this lead to two different settings in BIOS Setup). Why do they
treat these features as if they were a unique one?
The only thing I'm sure about the A20 line is that it is, by default, disabled in real
mode but it needs to be activated for the HMA zone (the 65520 bytes beyond the first 1meg)
to be accessible, and this area is still used by Win95 when emulating real mode (v86).
However, switching from protected/v86 mode to real mode needed a reset only on the buggy
286.
About Curtis Kobelsky's comment on ROM shadowing, I don't think that there's a problem
there with shadowing, as the address ranges used by add-on cards beyond 2Go are used for
memory-mapped I/O which, by principle, can't be shadowed nor cached. The only memory range
concerned with shadowing is the C0000-FFFFF one...
I believe that Video RAM caching only concern the A0000-BFFFF range, not the address
located beyond 2Go for example. Am I right ?
Adrien Huvier
Hello Adrien,
Curiously, I have never seen both 32-bit Transfers and IDE HDD Block Mode options
together in the same BIOS. This is one of several reason that leads me to believe that
they are one and the same. Also, remember that the IDE bus is only 8-bits wide. So, a
32-bit transfer from the IDE controller to the CPU is essentially a transfer of multiple
blocks. Therefore, 32-bit transfers and IDE block mode should be one and the same BIOS
setting.
According to Award, Video RAM Caching only affects the A0000h-AFFFFh memory range and
not beyond that.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #77
Hi Adrian,
A20 is to control the HMA, 64k minus 16 bytes of memory just above the 1MB memory
location. Normally used by the DOS kernel. Disabling this option will result in very small
conventional memory.
Regards.
I read most of the Malaysian homepage :)
Anonymous
Hello Anonymous,
Thanks for that piece of information there but there's no option to disable the A20
line in the BIOS, only an option to use the keyboard controller or the chipset itself.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #78
Hi,
First of all, I appreciate all the GREAT INFORMATION! However, I have a few questions.
1. Could you elaborate on the definition of "SDRAM Precharge Control"?
2. On my Abit BP6, there is an option in chipset features Setup: "SDRAM Leadoff
Command." What is this? The two options are 3 & 4.
3. The Abit BE6 manual states L2 cache latency can be adjusted from 1 to 15 and the higher
the setting, the faster the L2... This seems to defy logic. I thought it was the other way
around. Is the manual wrong?
Thanks again for the information!
Joe DiCarlo
Hello Joe,
I'll try my best to dig out more information on SDRAM Precharge Control. When I do,
I'll add it to the guide.
SDRAM Leadoff Command is a new option that has just been included with the latest ABIT
BIOSes. I'll be writing on that shortly.
What the manual meant was if the L2 cache latency was set to a higher number, it will
enable the L2 cache to run at a higher frequency. But for a given frequency, a lower L2
cache latency will result in a faster cache because there will be fewer wait states
between each command.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #79
I loved the BIOS guide!!! I have a question though........... What is exactly the
function of SDRAM Precharge Control?
Someone told me to disable it for better performance because the CPU has to wait for
the RAM to sync if it is enabled. but if it is disabled it can do incremental Memory to
CPU transfers which is faster than the sync. Maybe I am completely mistaken.......... care
to explain in detail?
Thanks.
Life goes on.
Juan Chang
Hello Juan,
I'll have to investigate the SDRAM Precharge Control feature. It's really one of the
most undocumented BIOS feature. I'll update the guide when I find something.
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/
Comment #80
Adrian,
Good to see someone putting together a straightforward, comprehensive (and pretty
accurate) guide to BIOS setup. Most PC problems I have to deal with stem from incorrect
BIOS settings. It's the starting point for the whole system, if you don't get the BIOS
right, chances are the system won't work properly. Too many people ignore the BIOS (or
plain just don't understand it) and then wonder why their PC doesn't work.
One thing I would say, is about your PnP OS advice for Linux. Although Linux is not
really PnP compatible, most distributions (I use Debian), use a piece of software called
ISAPNPTOOLS to setup ISA cards. If you have PnP OS set to No, the BIOS will attempt to
configure ISA cards itself. This does not make them work with Linux, though, you still
need to use something like ISAPNPTOOLS. However, having both the BIOS and ISAPNPTOOLS
attempting to configure ISA cards can lead to problems where the two don't agree.
The solution? Set PnP OS to Yes, and let ISAPNPTOOLS take care of ISA cards in Linux,
as BIOS configuration of ISA cards doesn't work for Linux anyway (with the current stable
and development kernels). Most times, it probably won't make a difference, but someone
somewhere will have problems, and Linux will always work with PnP OS set to Yes. Just a
minor point. Keep up the good work, as they say.....
Regards
Jonathan
(Gnk. Internal Extn. 23500) Commodity QA Engineering
Hello Jonathan,
Thanks for that great information on Linux! I've updated the BIOS guide to reflect your
contribution. Thanks again! :D
Adrian Wong
Adrian's Rojak Pot
http://www.rojakpot.com/
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/ |
