
Hercules III User Manual Rev A.2
www.diamondsystems.com
Page
37
9.1.3
Miscellaneous Settings
•
Memory Cache
Unless there is a specific reason to change these settings, it is best to keep these settings as-is. Certain
system functions, such as USB keyboard support under BIOS menus, may be adversely affected by
changes to these settings. These cache settings can make a noticeable difference for low-level BIOS
calls and, as such, can severely limit performance if they are disabled.
•
Advanced Chipset Control
The following settings should be retained:
Frame Buffer Size: 8MB
AGP Rate: 4X
Expansion Bus Performance: Normal
The Frame Buffer size can be increased for specific applications. Be aware, however, that an increase in this
memory size will result in a decrease in overall system memory available. The AGP rate affects internal video
accesses and does not affect any external bus speeds.
“Expansion Bus Performance” is an adjustment to allow an increase in ISA I/O Access speeds. For applications
where ISA I/O accesses seem to be a limiting factor, this performance may be increased to “Accelerated”. Be
aware that increasing these timings may adversely affect system stability with external add-on PC/104 cards.
This setting has no direct affect on PCI or memory speeds; it only affects ISA PC/104 devices. It is best to leave
this setting at “Normal,” if there are no ISA I/O performance issues.
•
Advanced
Installed O/S:
(See Section 23) Select the operating system.
Large Disk Access Mode: (See Section 23) Select the disk access mode.
•
On-Chip Multifunction Device
USB Device: Enabled/disable USB ports.
Legacy Audio:
“Legacy Audio” only affects DOS-based applications when used with the VIA-supported DOS Drivers.
Enabling this setting will require system I/O, IRQ, and DMA resources. It is strongly recommended that
this setting be left “Disabled.”
•
PCI and ISA Configuration (from the Advanced menu)
The following settings should be retained:
PCI IRQ Level 1-4:
Auto-select for all
PCI/PNP ISA UMB Region Exclusion: Available for all
•
Power Management
This setting is only effective under DOS. Otherwise, the OS power management settings pre-empt these
settings. The only power management mode suppo
rted by the system is “Power-On Suspend.” Other
suspend modes are not supported and should not be used under any OS. Examples of unsupported
suspend modes include, “Hibernate,” under Windows, and “Suspend-to-Disk” or “Suspend-to-RAM”.