![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Video & System BIOS
- Thread starter Keith130
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2003
- Messages
- 5,141
Generally, system - yes, video - no.
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2003
- Messages
- 5,141
I was in a rush, forgive, I'm gonna backpeadal a little here.
In all the systems I've owned, the system bios was default cached "on", and I had no issues with the setting, so I left it that way. Heres the deal: In both system and video bios', having them cached essentially enables caching of the system BIOS ROM at F0000h-FFFFFh via the L2 cache/video BIOS ROM at C0000h-C7FFFh via the L2 cache. This greatly speeds up accesses to the system or video BIOS. However, this does not translate into better system performance because the OS does not need to access these BIOS's much. Specifically in the video bios : this does not translate into better system performance because the OS bypasses the BIOS using the graphics driver to access the video card's hardware directly.
As such, it probably would be a waste of L2 cache bandwidth to cache the system or video BIOS instead of data that are more critical to the system's performance. In addition, if any program writes into this memory area, it COULD result in a system crash(altho I havnt seen it, which is why ive left the system cache alone).
In all the systems I've owned, the system bios was default cached "on", and I had no issues with the setting, so I left it that way. Heres the deal: In both system and video bios', having them cached essentially enables caching of the system BIOS ROM at F0000h-FFFFFh via the L2 cache/video BIOS ROM at C0000h-C7FFFh via the L2 cache. This greatly speeds up accesses to the system or video BIOS. However, this does not translate into better system performance because the OS does not need to access these BIOS's much. Specifically in the video bios : this does not translate into better system performance because the OS bypasses the BIOS using the graphics driver to access the video card's hardware directly.
As such, it probably would be a waste of L2 cache bandwidth to cache the system or video BIOS instead of data that are more critical to the system's performance. In addition, if any program writes into this memory area, it COULD result in a system crash(altho I havnt seen it, which is why ive left the system cache alone).
BillLeeLee
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2003
- Messages
- 13,486
I have set Video BIOS and System BIOS cacheable both to disable and have not encountered problems. Modern OSes rarely touch the BIOS now (if ever); these settings are more of legacy settings than anything else. It's okay to disable them and get back some precious L2 cache in general.