МАТПЛАТЫ

Introduction

There are several ways to increase your system performance. Some of them give you big, most of them only little improvements. However, even the little improvements sum up to a considerable increase in system speed.

Speed up Your CPU

Some CPUs in some Operating Systems can run faster than at normal settings. Here's what I've got for you:

AMD K6

• enwa.exe
  This little program will enable 'write allocate' in systems that don't already do that by their BIOS. It only works under DOS, Win3.1, Win95. Run it automaitcally from your autoexec.bat and it will change the specific registers of then K6 to the correct values. This program is completely harmless and doesn't interact with anything.
• msr.zip
  If you need to change the MSR's of the K6 for 'write allocate' under Windows NT, you'll have to use this utility. Unfortunately it's kinda inconvenient. Please refer to the 'readme' and 'install.doc' for further instructions.

Intel Pentium Pro

• ctppro.zip
  Programs the PPro internal Memory Type Range Register (MTRR) to increase especially video performance, can enable the 'fast strings' of the PPro, which are disabled usually, due to a flaw of PPros with stepping 1, enables the write buffers of the Intel Orion and Natoma chipsets.
  This program is of course another c't Magazine program and also of course from Andreas Stiller. If you've got a PPro you impossibly can do without it.
• fastvid.zip
  Programms the PPro MTRRs for frame buffer and VGA memory area to 'write combined' and enables write buffers of the Orion chipset.
• os2.zip
  Does the same as the above in form of drivers for OS/2.

Cyrix/IBM 6x86

• 6xopt074.zip
  6x86 optimizer written by Mikael Johansson. Configures 6x86 cpu registers to increase performance. Additionally it enables Windows95 to 'see' the 6x86 CPU in the device manager.
• directnt.zip
  Enables 6x86 cache under Windows NT 4. For all the Microsoft impaired NT users.
• M1OPT.EXE
  This program configures the 6x86 for high performance
• M1.EXE
  This program allows the user to view and edit 6x86 bit settings
• IBMM9.EXE
  This program allows the user to view and edit 6x86 bit settings
• IBMM1.EXE
  This program allows the user to view and edit 6x86 bit settings
• PUZZLE.EXE
  For Optimizing 6x86-Based Systems, here the manual for it (PDF)

Take Care of Your BIOS Settings

This simple option could already increase your system performance considerably! If you've never touched the BIOS setup it's about time to give it a try. Lots of computer companies and even the BIOS itself tells you to be careful with the settings, but as long as you are taking precautions nothing bad will happen to your system at all.

Enter the BIOS Setup by pressing whilst system boot up. Now your are in the BIOS setup menu. Choose the different menu points and write down your settings. Now you can change your settings according to my BIOS Guide. In case the computer is occuring problems, you always can change back to your old settings again. You can't do any permanent damage in case you have choosen the wrong settings and you always can change the settings back, because your computer will always reach the BIOS setup.

Try to Tune Your Chipset Settings

This is something for specialists. There is an actual way to change your chipset settings beyond the settings your BIOS is able to change. You will need some software for it. One program I know is from the German c't Magazine. It's written by nobody else than Andreas Stiller, the ingenious PC journalist, managing editor of c't Magazine's hardware section and author of ctcm. With this program you can change settings while your system is running. Dave Burke was so nice to translate and write the configuration file for Intel PCIsets, including the Mercury, Neptun, Saturn, Triton FX, HX and VX chipset.

I'll soon dedicate an own page to this subject and add configuration files for the VIA and hopefully the SiS chipsets.

For now, I only can offer you to download this nice little utility.

Always Use up to Date Drivers

I guess there's not much to say about this.

Have a look at THE DRIVERS HEAD QUARTERS!

Overclock Your CPU or Increase the Bus Seed

Well, in case you havent found these pages yet, it's about time to read both thoroughly.

Tom's Overclocking Guide

Tom's Bus Speed Guide

High Performance Hardware

You should have a look at the Mainboard Guide

Benchmark Your System

I think there are thousands of benchmarks around nowadays, but not all of them are a real help. I admit that every benchmark is of some kind of help in case you want to tweak your own system. They show you which configuration is slower and which is faster, as long as you only change one variable. However, in case you want to compare your system performance to others, the number of useful benchmarks is shrinking down a lot. It doesn't help if your system reaches a higher 3DBench score than that of your neighbour, but your games or your Excel runs much slower than his. What you need is a benchmark that gives you real world performance in numbers. There are certainly some areas, where you want to have the performance of only one or a little number of system components, but here you also should be careful what you use. I still think it's best to know how a 'one component' benchmark is working, before I'm shouting 'Halleluja' about high scores, which may be entirely meaningless.

Real World Performance Benchmarks:

• Windows 32 Bit Business Applications
  • BAPCo SYSmark/32 for Windows 95 and Windows NT
  • Winstone 97
• Windows 16 Bit Business Applications
  • Winstone 96, which is not officially available anymore
• DOS Games
  • Quake Timedemo Benchmark
• Direct3D Windows 95 Games
  • Tom's Monster Truck Madness Benchmark

Component Performance Benchmarks:

• Memory Performance
  • Wintune 95
  • ctcm Mainboard Benchmark
• Video Card 2D Performance
  • Winbench 97
• Video Card DOS Performance
  • profile.exe coming with SDD
• Harddisk Performance
  • chkhd
  • h2bench.zip
  • cthdben.zip
  • Winbench 97
• Harddisk Interface Performance
  • Coretest
• CDROM Performance
  • cdbench
  • Winbench 97

There are quite a few benchmarks, which I disapprove. These are Landmark, Norton System Information, the HDD benchmark of WinTune 95 and also the completely abstract 'busperf', which btw is 11 years old. There are more useless benchmarks around, but I'm tired of naming all of them. There is one other popular benchmark which is fairly questionable, CPU₁₆ and CPU₃₂ coming with Winbench97. What are the results of these benchmarks telling us? Well, a number - that's about it!

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