BIOS Settings Can Cost You FPS
© 2000 by Joseph Delgado
I like AMD processors they give a good deal of performance for a lot less money than a Pentium
III. Presently I have four, one is a 233 MHz that's excluded from this study. The other three
computers have a Voodoo 3 AGP 3D Card, a Dlink 100 MHz Network Card, Windows 98 SE, Full Install
of Quake II, the 3.21 Patch, the latest drivers, and BIOS updates. All computers have 100 MHz DIMM
memory.
The 550 MHz has a SoundBlaster Live sound card and 128 MB RAM. The 500 MHz has 128 MB of RAM and a
SoundBlaster PCI 128 Sound Card. The 400 MHz also has a SoundBlaster PCI 128 and 64 MB of RAM.
How I tested
I started with a clean boot and ran Quake II. I brought up Quake II's console with "~". I
typed in "timedemo1" and hit enter, on the next line "demomap demo2.dm2". It went through the demo
and displayed the average FPS. I discarded the first test and did the test five more times for each
system. Between tests, all you need to do is press the up arrow and the last command in typed for
you.
Before Results
Originally performance really sucked. I followed some safe BIOS setups for Voodoo 3 from
www.tweak3D.net, because I had problems with Aliens vs. Predator
where it would exit out to the desktop after a few minutes of play. Well it solved the problem,
but take a look at the results:
Obviously, I didn't want a 550 MHz running 18% slower than a 400 MHz System. So I took the recommended
BIOS settings for Voodoo 3 from www.tweak3D.net and added AGP
Turbo mode to enabled.
Assign IRQ to VGA: enabled or auto
Video BIOS cacheable: enabled
Video BIOS shadow:enabled
VGA Palette snoop: disabled
PCI Palette snoop: disabled
C8xxxx-CBxxxx shadow:disabled
AGP Aperture size: 64MB
AGP Turbo mode: enabled
Significant Improvement
With a few changes, I had a good jump in performance, between fifty and sixty percent.
Aliens vs. Predator ran a lot better and so did Unreal. I wouldn't mind seeing if the
performance increases even more with a TNT2 Ultra 32MB Video Card, but the card wouldn't take
advantage of AMD's 3DNow. Probably still kick ass.
From the results, I'm replacing the SoundBlaster Live Card and replacing it with a PCI 128,
trailing nine frames behind a 50 MHz slower system is not good. Plus with only two speakers,
environmental audio is not a pressing concern. I'll save the Live card for another Pentium
based system down the road.
Bottom Line
We're always talking about high FPS (Frames Per Second) rates and how fast the latest hardware
is, but it's worth checking out your system settings, but before playing with your BIOS make sure you
write down the original settings. Since using "Restore to Defaults" can leave your system in worse
shape than when you started. (7/6/00)
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