Day 30

Classroom Hardware Discussion

Plus BIOS Tuning

Surge Protectors

What are joules?

What is a brownout?

What is a surge?

UPS

What are the advantages of having a UPS over a surge protector?

Form Factors

AT vs. ATX

What would be the top picks for PC hardware this month?

For The Average System

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Video
HDD
Sound
Modem
CD-ROM
other...

For The Top of The Line

CPU
Motherboard
RAM
Video
HDD
Sound
Modem
CD-ROM
other...

BIOS Tuning

Tuning up your BIOS can be a tricky affair. This task should be well understood to fully benefit from the new features found on today's motherboards.

Memory Tuning from the BIOS

From the "Advanced" menu, select "Chip Configuration."

Find the SDRAM Timing and select it.
Most PCs are supplied with highly conservative factory settings for memory access, with the result that vast amounts of power are squandered.

Change the setting to "User Define."

The memory clock (whether 100 MHz or 133 MHz) does govern the memory performance to a great deal, but CAS latency provides a key indicator as to how fast the memory can be accessed. If you look at most older or cheap memory modules out there, they can only operate in CL3 mode, meaning CAS latency = 3. These older technologies lack an EEPROM chip, which holds important data like CAS latency. But, it is possible to access the memory with shorter latency cycles than the factory-defined ones. For example, many CL3 modules can be operated at a CAS latency of 2. This operating mode does not work with all modules - trial and error is the only solution when working with this cheaper memory.

Notice that here the 3T is being changed to 2T (CAS 3 to CAS 2) Latency. By the way- There is a 5% difference in performance between CAS 3 and CAS 2 of the same speed. In Fact, a SDRAM PC133 CAS2 is faster than a SDRAM PC150 CAS3.

Changing the "SDRAM Cycle Time" also affects the memory performance.

Enabling the "All banks" option produces a marginal change in performance.

Setting the Video Memory Cache Mode to "USWC" enables the write cache of the video memory and produces slight performance increases in conjunction with advanced graphics cards.

The AGP Capability should be at 4X, and not at 2X for newer cards.

Priority of the PCI bus should be enabled.

SDRAM Data Driving Mode should be at the "Strong" setting to ensure higher memory performance and disable any error correction routines.

For satiability, DRAM Read Latch Delay, Memory Early/ Delay Write, and DIMM Interleave Settings should be left at "AUTO."

Shadow Configuration

The setting found under this heading should not be changed from the default settings.

Settings to help the CPU along

The L1 and L2 Caches store data for the CPU, so that it can work without having to wait so long for data. These should always be enabled.

The CPU L2 ECC check should be disabled. Doing this increases performance by more that 1%.

Disable any unused components

If your motherboard came with an onboard audio chip, but you are not using it, then it should be disabled.

An Item to help your Sound Card

If you are having problems with the sound card: Changing the "PCI Latency Timer" offers a help to many.

SYMBIOS SCSI BIOS

This setting should be set to disable to speed up boot-up time.

Settings to Help your AGP card along

Primary AGP BIOS should be set to AGP, if you are using a AGP card.

If you do not have any ISA cards, then why would you need to reserve these PCI IRQs?
Setting them to "NO" speeds things up in a 100% PnP system.

The "Spread Spectrum Control" function slows the system. It should always be disabled.

PCI to DRAM Prefetch help performance and therefor should be enabled.

AGP Aperture size should be no greater than 32 MB. Setting this to higher numbers does nothing at all in terms of gaming and performance.

Need a 10% boost in your graphics, then try enabling your AGP Fast Write option!

Power Savings

Gamers should disable these settings, to prevent any "Wake Up" states from crashing a game. These features are only worth while in office systems that are on 100% of the time.

Overclocking

The system's FSB can be increased to achieve greater performance, but may have negative effects on devices such as sound cards and modems that use this FSB. Changing the multiplier is also possible on "unlocked" CPUs, but too much overclocking will cause a great deal of heat production within the CPU, which may cause its death.

By fine-tuning your motherboard, you may receive anywhere from 10% to 25% greater performance without having to buy the next hottest thing.

...and what is the next hottest thing?

ASUS A7V266 Socket A DDR motherboard

This board uses the VIA KT266 chipset to support AMD Athlon/Duron processors up to 1.5GHz +, along with DDR memory. The A7V266 can hold up to 3GB high-speed DDR200/266 SDRAM at a peak bandwidth of 2.1GB per second. The board provides overclocking options that include DIP switches and ASUS’s "JumperFree" mode which lets you adjust overclocking settings manually or from the BIOS. 1MHz incremental settings push system-bus settings to over 200MHz, while CPU voltage adjustments in 0.05V intervals over default provide additional performance options. It supports Ultra-DMA 33/66/100, AGP Pro slot with AGP4X support, six USB ports, five PCI slots, one AMR shared slot, two serial ports, one parallel port, optional C-Media CMI8738 6-channel audio controller, wake-on-LAN, wake-on-ring, smart card reader (SCR) interface support, ASUS PC health monitoring, and ASUS PC Probe software. It never stops, does it...

For the test....

You should be able to identify the following parts on your project PCs

Power supply

Motherboard

PCI or ISA slots

All adapter cards

CPU

ROM BIOS

SIMMs or DIMMs

IDE cables

How many pins are in each IDE cable?

Hard disk drive, give me the geometry of the drive