Complete BIOS optimization Guide

1. standard cmos setup (standard cmos settings)
Here is the most basic CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide semicondu, Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) system settings, including date, drive and display adapter, the most important one is halt on: System suspension settings, the default value is All Errors, indicating that startup will stop if any error occurs during POST (Power On Self Test, Power-On Self-Test). This option ensures system stability. If you want to speed up, you can set it to No Errors, that is, to start it whenever possible. However, the acceleration may result in system Errors. Please choose as needed.
1. Drive A/Drive B
Options: 360 K, 5.25in; 1.2 M, 5.25in; 720 K, 3.25in; 1.4 M, 3.25 in; 2.88 M, 3.25in
Set the appropriate drive. If no hardware is available, set it to None as much as possible to improve the system self-check speed.
2. Video)
Option: mirror/VGA, Mono (black and white display)
Set it to mirror/VGA. Do not change it to Mono, which will slow down the startup speed.

Ii. bios features setup (BIOS feature device)
1. Virus Warning/Anti-Virus Protection (Virus Warning/Anti-Virus Protection)
Option: Enabled, Disabled, and ChipAway)
This setting prevents external programs from writing data to the boot and hard disk partition tables. When a write operation occurs, the system will automatically generate a warning and prompt the user to interrupt the execution of the program. It does not protect the entire hard disk, and the installation of the operating system (such as Windows 95/98) and some disk diagnostic programs, or even the BIOS upgrade, may cause unnecessary conflicts and lead to program interruptions. We recommend that you Disable this option. The system recognizes this option as Disable.
Some boards have their own anti-virus kernels that provide a higher level of defense than normal virus warnings. However, when using a peripheral controller that comes with a BIOS (such as a scsicard or an UltraDMA 66 Controller, in the startup zone, viruses can bypass the system BIOS for attacks, and the protection will be completely ineffective.

2. CPU Level 1 Cache/Internal Cache (central processor Level 1 Cache/Internal Cache)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
This setting is used to control whether the master Cache of the CPU is enabled or disabled. L1 Cache has a great impact on the overall performance of the machine. After the master Cache is disabled, the system performance will be reduced by several orders of magnitude. During overclocking, a level-1 Cache is often the key to success. For example, if you cannot exceed 500 MHz, it does not mean that the CPU cannot be up to 500 MHz. It is likely that the L1 Cache cannot be reached, therefore, disabling the first-level cache can improve the success rate of overclocking.

3. CPU Level 2 Cache/External Cache (central processor Level 2 Cache/External Cache)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
This setting is used to control whether the master Cache of the CPU is enabled or disabled. The impact of this setting on the system and overclock is similar to that on the first-level Cache. disabling the L2 Cache can also overclock the success rate.

4. CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking (CPU Level 2 Cache ECC verification)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
The system can Enable the L2Cache inside the CPU for ECC (Error Checking and Correction, Error Checking and Correction) detection. The default value is Enable, which can detect and correct unit signal errors to ensure data accuracy, it is helpful for the stability of super-frequency, but cannot detect two-bit signal errors. It is important to note that enabling ECC detection will delay the system self-check time and reduce the machine performance. In addition, this feature can be enabled only with memory support.

5. Quick Power On Self Test (fast Power-On Self-detection)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
This setting can speed up system self-check and allow the system to skip some self-check options (such as full memory detection). However, Enabling this setting will reduce the ability to detect errors and weaken the system's reliability.

6. Boot Sequence
Option: A, C, SCSI/EXT
C, A, SCSI/EXT
C, CD-ROM,
CD-ROM, C,
D, A, SCSI/EXT (only available when there are at least two IDE hard disks)
E, A, SCSI/EXT (only available when there are at least three IDE hard disks)
F, A, SCSI (only available when there are at least four IDE hard disks)
SCSI/EXT, A, C
SCSI/EXT, C,
A, SCSI/EXT, C
LS/ZIP, C
This setting determines the drive letter of the system boot. If you want to speed up system self-check, you can set it to (C Only), then the system will not perform self-check on other drives and directly enter the Master Boot hard disk. Some mainboards (such as ABIT BE6 and BP6) have additional IDE controllers that can be connected to the third or fourth group of IDE devices. In this case, you should select EXT to take precedence.

7. Boot Sequence EXT Means (define the EXT type of the startup Sequence)
Options: IDE and SCSI
When you use EXT devices, define the device types used, including (Integrated Drive Electronics, electronic Integrated drives) and SCSI (Small Computer System Interface, mini Computer System Interface ).

8. Swap Floppy Drive (Swap Floppy Drive letter)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
Swap disk drive location to adapt to different formats of floppy disk. When the system has two soft drives installed, if set to Enabled, the system will start drive B as the boot disk. If set to Disabled, the opposite is true.

9. Boot Up Floppy Seek (find a Floppy drive when starting)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
Test the existence of a soft drive when starting the system, and check whether the number of tracks is 40 or 80. Generally, 40 tracks are kb, the 720 K, 1.2 MB, and MB are 80 tracks. The default value is Enable. Note: when the number of tracks in a floppy disk is 80, the BIOS does not distinguish the type of tracks.

10. Boot Up NumLock Status (the Status of the number lock key on the keyboard at startup)
Options: On and Off)
Control the on/off status of the keypad without affecting the performance.

11. Gate A20 Option (A20 address line selection)
Options: Normal (Normal) and Fast (acceleration)
Which control unit is used to manage the A20 address line with memory address greater than 1 MB? Set it to Normal and use the keyboard controller for management. Set it to Fast and use the chipset controller for management, it can improve the memory access speed and overall system performance, especially for operating systems such as OS/2 and Windows. Because their protection mode often requires the BIOS A20 address line for switching, and the chipset controller is faster than the keyboard controller, Fast is the preferred setting.

12. ide hdd Block Mode (IDE Hard Disk Block Mode)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
The previous hard disk access mode was implemented by multiple sectors. In the block mode, multiple sectors are formed into one block. Each time several sectors are accessed, the data transmission rate during multi-sector access can be increased. When this feature is enabled, the BIOS will automatically detect whether the hard disk supports block mode (most hard disks currently have this feature), and 64 KB of data can be sent every time the disk is interrupted. If you are using a Windows NT system, be careful. It does not support block mode and may cause data transmission errors. Therefore, Microsoft recommends that you disable the IDE Hard Disk Block Mode for Windows NT 4.0 users. After this feature is disabled, only bytes of data can be sent for each interruption, reducing the overall performance of the disk.

13. 32-bit Disk Access (32-bit Disk Access)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
In fact, 32-bit disk access is not a real 32-bit transmission, but is achieved by combining two 16-bit operations with the IDE controller. For the PCI bus, the more data that can be transferred at the same time, the better. Therefore, the false 32-bit transmission can also increase the system performance. Windows NT does not support 32-bit disk access, which may cause data transmission errors. Therefore, Microsoft recommends Windows NT 4.0 users to disable this feature. Of course, 16-bit is faster than 32-bit in any case.

14. Typematic Rate Setting (input speed Setting)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
Whether to use manual settings to control the input speed. If you want to accelerate the text processing efficiency or enable it, You can adjust the input speed and input latency only after Enabled.

15. Typematic Rate (Chars/Sec) (input Rate, unit: character/second)
Options: 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 30
The number of consecutive characters entered within one second. The greater the value, the faster the speed.

16. Typematic Rate Delay (Msec) (input Delay, unit: milliseconds)
Options: 250,500,750,100 0
The lower the value, the faster the latency of each input character.
17. Security Option)
Option: System, Setup
This feature is enabled only when a password is set in the BIOS. When it is set to System, the BIOS enters the password for each startup. When it is set to Setup, enter the password when entering the BIOS menu. If you don't want others to tamper with your machine, add a password.
18. PCI/VGA Palette Snoop (PCI/VGA color detection)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
This feature is only used for additional devices on graphics card interfaces, such as MPEG daughter cards. You can use the color detection function to correct the cached data of frames and send them to additional devices and the primary display card to avoid the black screen after the child card is added.

19. Assign IRQ For VGA (Assign IRQ: Interrupt Request to the VGA device to Interrupt the Request)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
At present, many high-end graphics cards require IRQ to increase the speed of data exchange with the motherboard, enabling it can greatly improve the overall performance. On the contrary, the low-end graphics card does not need to allocate IRQ. In the video card user manual, it shows whether the calling is interrupted. The benefit of not occupying the interruption is to save system resources.

20. MPS Version Control For OS (OS-oriented MPS Version)
Option: 1.1, 1.4
It is dedicated to multi-processor boards and is used to determine the version of MPS (MultiProcessor Specification, multi-processor Specification) so that PC manufacturers can build intel-based multi-processor systems. Compared with the 1.1 Standard, the 1.4 standard adds an extended structure table that can be used for multiple PCI buses and will be advantageous for future upgrades. In addition, v1.4 has a second PCI bus and does not require a PCI Bridge Connection. Most of the new SOS (Server Operating Systems) support 1.4 standards, including WinNT and Linux SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing, Symmetric Multi-Processing architecture ). If possible, try v1.4.

21. OS Select For DRAM> 64 MB (how does the operating system handle memory larger than 64 MB)
Option: OS/2, Non-OS/2
When the memory size is larger than 64 MB, the ibm OS/2 system will manage the memory in different ways. If you do not need OS/2, set it to "Non-OS/2 ".

22. hdd s. M.A. R. T. Capability (Hard Disk S. M. A. R. T. Capability)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, automatic Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is a hard disk protection Technology that enables increased system stability.
In the network environment, S. m. a. r. t. some unsupervised data packets may be automatically sent to the hard disk, which are not allowed by the operating system and often cause system restart. If you want to use a computer as a network server, you 'd better disable this feature.

23. Report No FDD For Win9x (For Win9x, the Report cannot find the floppy disk drive)
Option: Enabled, Disabled
On a machine without FDD (Floppy Disk Driver, Floppy Drive), disable this option and the FDC (Floppy Disk Controller, Floppy Drive Controller) option in Intergrated Peripherals, IRQ6 can be released in Win9x to save system resources.

24. Delay IDE Initial (Sec) (delayed IDE initialization, in seconds)
Options: 0, 1, 2, 3 ,...,