bios tweaking for performance
 

more and more is being published on this arcane artform. lol.
but seriously, some good memory bandwidth and information transfer gains are to be had by tweaking your bios.
the only trouble is getting in there first.... with most ibm clones its as simple as pushing the delete button just after you start up your pc. (when it says "press delete to enter setup")
unfortunately this does not work on compaq and ibm machines (just to be difficult i think). i recently discovered this when trying to tweak some friends pc's.
but i found the solutions after a bit of digging on the net and i thought i would share:
ibm: press F10 when the ibm splash screen first shows at bootup
compaq: press F1 when the compaq splash screen first shows at bootup
here is one of many guides on how to tweak your bios for optimum pc performance:

http://www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/bios/index.shtml

and heres another:

http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cpu/

and here's a program that does it for you if you have one of the supported motherboards (there is a list of these on the page). i've never used something like this cos i like to tinker with settings myself, so dont blame me if it goes wrong!

http://users.powernet.co.uk/sysserv/page123.html

happy tweaking :)

Re: bios tweaking for performance
 

I sounds cool...but how badly can you fuck up your pc is you do something wrong?

Re: bios tweaking for performance
 

I guess it would be REALLY necessary to keep a backup of your current BIOS before you upgrade it.  I can't tell you how many times that has come in handy for me whenever I had to work on upgrading someone's board.  If the proverbial "s**t hit the fan" then you can always reload the previous saved BIOS and start from there.

Re: bios tweaking for performance
 

the risks are non existant for tweaking your existing bios because there is always a method of resetting your bios on the motherboard, although ive never had to do this yet!! most modern boards have a pair of jumper pins you need to bridge for around 5 seconds. older, more primitive boards may require removal of their onboard battery for 1/2 an hour to acheive the same effect (1/2 an hr because the on board capacitors can hold a charge this long).

a small but serious risk is apparent when you "flash" your bios to the newer version. this process takes up to 30 seconds and you get the option to save your old one when you do this.
the risk i speak of is an interruption to the power supply when you are doing the "flashing". if you use an uninterruptable power supply then there is no risk.