Announcement

**Greebe** · 13 February 2001, 20:58

Jack, why don't you just come out and say you have a G400Max and would like to know what we have found as the fastest settings instead of playing this game.

1. depends on the cpu and how far you are pushing it.
2. on (adds stability in most cases)
3. depends on if there is any stability issues and or if the card can do AGP4x.
4. on
5. on
6. ? (this would slow mem access down)
7. 256 or half your installed mem (if there is a problem)
8. off
9. 33
10. on (unless there are problems)

(edit)
Install the OS with turbo off. This is for after you have a stable system and wish to tweak more out of it, instead of running into trouble with it on, without knowing if it's stable.

AGP settings, 2x is actually more stable than 4x, but I highly doubt you'll see any proformance difference between the two... if it ain't broke don't fix it.
(/edit)
For the rest of the settings these things either impact the proformance in games or features that may be needed in apps.

But the typical gamer has...
1. off
2. off
3. off
4. on
5. off

[This message has been edited by Greebe (edited 14 February 2001).]

**FrankDC** · 14 February 2001, 00:58

A few minor corrections to Greebe's sage advice:

Spread Spectrum modulation is only required in *very* rare cases, where electrical noise is causing signal integrity problems. Leave it disabled.

Video ROM BIOS Shadow does nothing in modern systems, except waste a bit of lower memory. Disable it.

**Greebe** · 14 February 2001, 01:22

Spread spectrum modulation lowers the noise level produced by the system preventing it from becoming a problem. Leave it on.

As for shadowing... I've heard both sides of the coin and can say it really doesn't make that much of a difference (tested on many platforms)... I leave it on tho as this should allow for faster reads.

**Gurm** · 14 February 2001, 04:31

As far as the BIOS shadowing goes, I'd leave the system BIOS shadowed, and on my machine the video BIOS is shadowed as well. If you have a problem, or want to benchmark it both ways and determine that it's faster with it off, then turn it off.

As far as the cache mode, if you have USWC go ahead and enable it. Most BIOSes make you choose USWC or UC, cached really isn't an option that much any more.

DON'T cache the video memory, this is just asking for problems.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

**Heiney** · 14 February 2001, 13:27

I've heard bad things about Spread Spectrum. I used to 100% leave it enabled, until I did some serious research on usenet.

Apparently it's mainly an engineering testing tool, not really an oft used feature of boards.

What it does is modulate the frequencies of various signals of your motherboard. By doing this some of the EM interference is cancelled out. Unfortunately, by varying these frequencies you can cause components become unstable. It stresses them a little.

Anyway, I've had it off for several months and I certainly have not lost stability.

And as for video BIOS caching, you should leave it off. Mainly they are for DOS video modes. If you run Duke Nukem, Quake non-3d, Doom, you should leave them on if you need speed.

Video RAM caching is different, it caches some of your video card's RAM in your CPU's L2 cache. This has some slight benefit for video speed but also slows down your CPU because you have less L2 cache available.

For more in depth answers, go here.
http://www.rojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz...uide_Index.htm

--------------------
ABIT BF6, Pentium III Katmai @663MHz, GW VOS32 Cooler, 256MB Crucial 7E SDRAM, Quantum Fireball Plus LM, Matrox G400 DH@160/200, Enlight 7237, 300watt TurboCool PS, and some fun with a Dremel!

[This message has been edited by Heiney (edited 14 February 2001).]

**Rags** · 15 February 2001, 22:53

.

**FrankDC** · 19 February 2001, 01:01

Good link, Heiney. I've not seen Spread Spectrum explained that well before.

Greebe, maybe you can find a link that suggests keeping it enabled? Meanwhile, here's the conventional wisdom:

" However, while enabling Spread Spectrum decreases EMI, system stability and performance may be slightly compromised. This may be especially true with timing-critical devices like clock-sensitive SCSI devices. "

**kjliew** · 19 February 2001, 12:12

Video RAM should NEVER NEVER be cacheable in L1 or L2. The setup option "Video RAM cacheable" is actually misleading by its description. Video RAM data is by nature loose ordering, it doesn't matter if you write to Pixel1 first or Pixel2 first. It's constantly changing most of the time and most of the time write-only. It's a serious waste of L1/L2 cache bandwidth if it's ever "cached" there, and have 0 benefits at all. There can be 4 memory types in modern processor such as P6 or Athlon, Uncacheable(UC), Write-Through(WT), Write-Back(WB) and Write-Combine(WC). Video RAM should be defined as WC memory. WC and UC is the same on read. But on write, UC is strict ordering while WC combines small writes into large buffer before putting out to memory, ordering doesn't matter. WC buffers are not part of L1/L2. Normally, the size of buffer is equal or multiple of the FSB burst length.

So I am guessing that when you enable "Video RAM cacheable" the BIOS should put the video RAM into WC memory type, otherwise it's UC. I don't think there is any stupid BIOS engineer that puts video RAM as WB memory-type when this option is enabled. Either way, L1/L2 never comes into play whatsoever.

[This message has been edited by kjliew (edited 19 February 2001).]

**Greebe** · 19 February 2001, 12:30

Sure Frank, through actual testing when I OC cpu's.

In the case of my Athlon500, I couldn't hit 800 til I enabled spread spectrum modulation and then changed that from 0.5% to -1.0% was I able to hit 850mHz stable.

Since Tweak didn't ask about peripherals and most don't have scsi I decided not to mention that it "may" impair, but then most know that scsi devices are particularly sensitive to OCing the bus. But that's another topic wholly unto itself.

**Tweakster** · 21 February 2001, 20:32

Thanks for all your input, its been helpful, but wouldn't ya know it, as soon as I got it all figured out, I went and got another MB with even more settings! The ASUS A7V133... So far so good, with a 1.2mhz. Just a little nervous to OC yet. Its been fairly stable so far. SO I AM NOT TOUCHING A THING!!! for now, My name is tweakster remember...

**Greebe** · 21 February 2001, 21:32

You're not a real Tweakster until U oc a cpu... lets say by at least 50% over default?!

Mine is at 170%

**Tweakster** · 22 February 2001, 19:33

50%??? that would mean Oc'ing my cpu to 1800mhz!!!! I am not that crazy...
Right now its running at a system clock of 107 to make it 1284 MHz with a bus of 214 at cas 2. I will try more soon enough.

Like he said in the movie Contact "small movements"

**Greebe** · 22 February 2001, 21:24

Oh screw that, go for the big kahuna!

**KvHagedorn** · 22 February 2001, 21:31

I agree.. small movements are unsatisfying. Nothing like going in there in the morning and unloading a really big shit.

------------------
Kind Regards,

KvH

Announcement

Bios settings

Bios settings

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment