What purpose does the option "C000,32k Shadow" serve in my BIOS?

[InlineFive]

I have an MSI KT3 Ultra with an AMI BIOS. The option "C000,32k Shadow" is in my BIOS and the user manual states that it increases performance. The three options are Cached (keep shadow paged to processor cache and main memory), Enabled (keep shadow cached to main memory and ocassionally to processor cache) and Disabled (duh).

I haven't found anything online that tells me what this does so I thought I would ask here. Thanks for the help!

-Por

 

[DN]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I have an MSI KT3 Ultra with an AMI BIOS. The option "C000,32k Shadow" is in my BIOS and the user manual states that it increases performance. The three options are Cached (keep shadow paged to processor cache and main memory), Enabled (keep shadow cached to main memory and ocassionally to processor cache) and Disabled (duh).

I haven't found anything online that tells me what this does so I thought I would ask here. Thanks for the help!

-Por

That most likely refers to the "video ROM BIOS shadow" option and should be set to "enabled".. The rest of the shadow settings can usually be left as "disabled" as they are there for legacy purposes (DOS) and hardly make any difference in Win95 and above as the OS tends to handle it itself..

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: DN

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I have an MSI KT3 Ultra with an AMI BIOS. The option "C000,32k Shadow" is in my BIOS and the user manual states that it increases performance. The three options are Cached (keep shadow paged to processor cache and main memory), Enabled (keep shadow cached to main memory and ocassionally to processor cache) and Disabled (duh).

I haven't found anything online that tells me what this does so I thought I would ask here. Thanks for the help!

-Por

That most likely refers to the "video ROM BIOS shadow" option and should be set to "enabled".. The rest of the shadow settings can usually be left as "disabled" as they are there for legacy purposes (DOS) and hardly make any difference in Win95 and above as the OS tends to handle it itself..

Would it increase my performance to have it set to cached? Keep in mind that I have a 256k Palomino processor here.

-Por

 

[DN]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo

Originally posted by: DN

Originally posted by: PorBleemo
I have an MSI KT3 Ultra with an AMI BIOS. The option "C000,32k Shadow" is in my BIOS and the user manual states that it increases performance. The three options are Cached (keep shadow paged to processor cache and main memory), Enabled (keep shadow cached to main memory and ocassionally to processor cache) and Disabled (duh).

I haven't found anything online that tells me what this does so I thought I would ask here. Thanks for the help!

-Por

That most likely refers to the "video ROM BIOS shadow" option and should be set to "enabled".. The rest of the shadow settings can usually be left as "disabled" as they are there for legacy purposes (DOS) and hardly make any difference in Win95 and above as the OS tends to handle it itself..

Would it increase my performance to have it set to cached? Keep in mind that I have a 256k Palomino processor here.

-Por

My guess is the difference would be "minimal" at best, but to satisfy your curiosity, nothing is stopping you from running some video tests..

 

[Bovinicus]

From what I understand, this option doesn't do anything positive for performnace on modern video cards. This was only necessary when video ROMs were extrememly slow. However, every system is different. See if you can produce and differences in benchmarks that would prove otherwise. My guess is that performance will remain nearly identical either way.

 

[InlineFive]

Well in that case I will save valuable cache and set it to Enabled. Thanks people!

 

[jhu]

there really is no reason to shadow any part of the bios or video rom anymore since modern operating systems access the hardware directly, bypassing the roms