Bus mastering - what does it do?

[ahartman]

I temporarily got my shutdown problems solved by turning off bus mastering. What does it do? I read somewhere that it allows the CPU & the video card to work at the same time. If I have this turned off, what are the ramifications to performance?

Also, how can I modify the bus mastering option outside of going into properties -> Settings -> Advanced -> Options?

For some reason, when I uncheck it, I say to reboot, my machine locks up, I reset, when I get back in, it's checked again. I cannot uncheck it.

[Muad'Dib]

I was having a similar problem. When you have bus-mastering enabled, yes, your video card and your cpu work simultaneously and it makes things look really REALLY smooth. On my system, it also makes things freeze really REALLY quickly... When you disable it, games tend to run less smoothly and you need to lower your resolution (or at least I did, but I'm only running at a K6-300).

If you can't uncheck it from where you said, try doing it either through safe mode (I don't know if that will work but just do properties ... options) and if you can't do that, download the Powerdesk Resolution Manager and uncheck it from there. Damn, now I see why I'm retaking english in college. I can't write for crap... I think there is also a way to force bus-mastering off from the reg hacks but I'm not sure. Good luck