BIOS stands for »Basic Input Output System« and is the heart of every computer . This is the most basic software on your computer. It is stored on a special chip on your motherboard and it is neccesarry for computer to start up. It contains the code required to control the keyboard, display, disk drives, etc. It also enables you to modify some settings that cannot be modified in through Windows or any other operating system. If these settings are not set properly or for some reason lost, your computer could be running a lot slower than it should.
Sometimes problems are also caused because of incompatibility of your motherboard with some other piece of hardware (most commonly newer CPUs). This can usually be resolved by updating your BIOS. Updating bios is a risky job and I do not recommend it to anyone inexperienced, unless it is clear that nothing else helps. Instructions on how to update your motherboard's bios are provided on your motherboard's manufacturer's website. Basically, there are two ways for doing it. One is with a bootable disk in DOS environment and the other, newer one, is through Windows. The first is believed to be safer, but a Windows based solution is definitely better for a novice. Nowadays most motherboard manufacturers provide also a Windows based update utility, so you have nothing to worry about - download the latest version of BIOS for your motherboard, download Windows based update utility and it will guide you through the update.

How do I access BIOS?

With most motherboards you need to tap "Del" key in the first boot phase after powering on the computer. If it does not work, please carefully watch on display messages while computer is booting up and it will tell you, which key you have to hit to get to BIOS.

What could be set wrong in BIOS and causing slow speeds?

Sometimes BIOS settings can get reset for an unknown reason and with that the CPU speed can lower under the correct one. You can check if your CPU is running at its nominated speed with a program called CPU-Z in combination with a program that will stress your CPU, so that it will run at the maximum speed (Hyper PI for example). Run CPU-Z, then run Hyper PI simultaneously and start 32M test. Then look what frequency CPU-Z is displaying. If the CPU clock is correct, everything is ok - if not, then you should go into bios and look what is wrong. You should search for the menu, where FSB speed and CPU multiplier are mentioned and try to change these two settings so that your CPU frequency is correct (CPU frequency= FSB frequency x multiplier). Be careful not to rise FSB too much without lowering memory speed by manipulating the FSB/memory divider.

Memory frequency determined by setting a correct ratio between it and FSB frequency. You can always check your current memory frequency in Windows by running CPU-Z and looking under "Memory" tab. You will find "DRAM Frequency there and this is it. If you have DDR, DDR2 or DDR3 ram, you must multiply this number by 2 to get the frequency that can be compared to your memory speicfications (example: 200MHz = 400MHz DDR). If this frequency is lower than on your PC's receipt, go into BIOS and try manipulating the FSB/memory divider to get to the right frequency.

If you have a motherboard without a PCI-e slot, then you probably have your video card installed in an AGP slot. If your computer is not very old, then your video card probably supports 8x AGP speed - and this setting must be correctly set in the BIOS. If it is set to a lower setting than 8x (4x, 2x), then you are probably experiencing a significant performance loss. Just change it to 8x and you are ready to play.

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