this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024

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Why does BIOS suck? (self.pcmasterrace)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Alpha71 to c/pcmasterrace

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is a bit of a mea culpa from me.

In 2022 I started the build of my dream PC. i9 13900k, 2 TB M.2 drive, 32 GB of 5200 DDR5 ram.

...and a 6600XT.

Now at the time it was all I could afford. I just wanted something that would run most games decently. nothing earth shattering but could do the heavy lifting i needed it to. I planned to upgrade later down the road.

For most games it was (and still is) perfectly fine. It ran most of my 100+ game library with no complaints from me.

But there was one game. Arma 3.

Now anyone who knows Arma 3 will readily admit it is a horribly optimized mess. This games drinks ram and chews up GPU's like they're candy.

And my 6600XT was crushed underneath it's massive weight.

Now the problem for me is at the time I was fanatical about the game. It was pretty much the only game I played constantly. I still play it to this day, just not as much.

I would get stutters, massive frame drops and tons of crashes all centered around not enough GPU ram. (the 6600Xt only has 8) I HATED this card and would loudly complain on every forum every time someone would mention it. I sneered at AMD and desperately wanted to go Nvidia.

problem was i still couldn't afford to upgrade.

But I finally had it last month and so I saved up and bought...

An Intel ARC A770.

But it worked. frame rates went up, crashes pretty much disappeared and and all was good in the world.

At this point I know you (probably) are screaming "Well what the fuck does this has to do with BIOS!?

well let me explain. You see I also wanted a much better m.2 drive so I bought a WD Black SN850X.

but while I was installing the NVME drive I noticed that my PCIe slot was set to gen3 X8. Not gen4 X16.

This solved everything. I went back to my 6600XT as I was having driver issues with the ARC card. and now when I play Arma 3 it runs much smoother. It still crashes because honestly the game needs a minimum of 16 GB of memory on a video card to run (sort of) fairly smoothly, but frames went up, stutters pretty much disappeared and the 1% lows were much more less noticeable.

All because I missed a BIOS setting.

So WHY? why is BIOS still so troublesome? why can't it detect cards and automatically set the proper settings by itself?

WHY!?

Anyways, that's all I have to say about that.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Trust me, pc buidling in 2024 is a piece of cake compared to the 90s, early 2000s...

[–] bfg9k 40 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah at least we don't have to mess with manually setting IRQs or making sure the IDE master/slave jumpers are properly set anymore

Luxury

[–] agent_flounder 21 points 9 months ago

Setting dip switches on the motherboard...

[–] deranger 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Overclocking via jumpers was intense. That first boot could let out the magic smoke if you had the orientation of the half dozen jumpers flipped.

K6-2 300MHz to 400MHz was my first PC build. 64MB of RAM and a Voodoo2 8MB. I was 12 years old, a stack of Boot PC magazines was my build guide.

The reason I built that PC? I fucked up a BIOS flash on my IBM Aptiva and the local guys couldn’t figure it out. Shitty BIOS led me to a lifetime of building PCs.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Unlocking a CPU with a pencil was great. Kids these days got no idea

[–] Alpha71 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I know. I was there too.😂

I fully admit BIOS has gotten MUCH better, but it still has a ways to go in my opinion.

[–] agent_flounder 5 points 9 months ago

You're not wrong.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My brother in Christ

open the fucking game launcher and configure it

The defaults arma runs with are ridiculously bad. You need to tell it how much memory your graphics card has. You need to tell it how many cores your CPU has . You need to tell it that you have more than two cores and actually use your other cores for operations .How much memory your RAM has? Which memory allocator to use Intel is the best mostly.

All of that is set under the parameters header and the launcher specifically the all parameters tab. There are multiple videos on how to configure it .

Sincerely, somebody who's been playing Arma 3 for over 10 years and who originally started playing on an I-5 laptop with 16 gigs of RAM and a 1050 mobile GPU and has been able to achieve a solid 30 FPS while flying helicopters for 10 years. Just FYI, the 1050 mobile has under 2 GB of vram

[–] Alpha71 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I've done all that. Don't speak the deep magic to me. I was there when it was written.

(In other words I've been with the franchise since flashpoint!) 🤣

And that's good for you. But every computer handles every program differently. for example when I had a starter i3 12100 with 16GB of ram but the exact same m.2 drive and GPU I could NOT get a joystick to work.

But when I switched to the new i9 I could get the joystick to work. Every system has it's own unique bugs and features.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm kinda the opposite. I don't want some company dictating how I should configure my stuff cough Microsoft always thinking a ps controller is my new microphone and speaker cough

[–] Alpha71 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I get it, but BIOS is stil this unexplained monster to most people. I'm barely BIOS literate myself. All I want is for it to have correct default settings for the stuff plugged into it, and then you can tweak to your hearts desire if you want.

I'm sorry, but setting the MAIN PCIe slot to gen3 X8 on a Z790 board is inexcusable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But if you want to be in the PC MASTER RACE club, you need to learn how to configure the BIOS.

[–] Alpha71 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Or maybe the BIOS needs to learn how to configure us! 😂

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

The setting you described sounds like a motherboard manufacturer issue. There's no reason for it not to default to "auto" unless that somehow limits something else they wanted to have on by default. They choose the defaults, and they chose that one, even if it's stupid. Either that, or you set it somehow previously and didn't realize or forgot you did.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

BIOS sukcs because I have to spam all F keys and delete on every new PC to enter it LOL. It should always be the same key DELETE

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I feel this comment. I've recently got into Proxmox and have found I'm having to occasionally boot into a "boot disc" to sort out errors on containers and I'm having to start the container up, go into console and spam all those keys just to get it to boot from the boot disc that doesn't really exist because it's a virtual machine.

Does my pipes in, WHATS THE BUTTON AND WHEN DO I PRESS IT?

[–] theit8514 7 points 9 months ago

BIOS is designed to be super low level and work the best in all situations, regardless of what that is. That means the defaults are usually designed for best overall performance rather than having all PCI lanes allocated to a single slot. Different mobos have different defaults and priorities.

Your mobo default probably makes sure that your 8 and 4x slots or nvme actually have full lanes available, where if you allocate the full lanes for the primary slot you may only have the 8x/4x slots running in 2x/1x mode.

It's up to you to determine if the 16x slot should have dedicated lanes. I don't remember ever having to change this on any of my machines, but I mostly run gaming mobos which probably prioritize having a dedicated GPU with full access to PCI lanes.

[–] circuitfarmer 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As someone who regularly plays Arma 3 on a 6600 XT (and on Linux no less), I'm kind of scratching my head here.

[–] Alpha71 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TBH it's probably Linux doing most of the heavy lifting. I know it's runs better on Linux. But I'm a windows man.

[–] circuitfarmer 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah, maybe. Much more system overhead on Windows and the driver situation is different (AMD drivers are now just included in the Linux kernel).

[–] TwanHE 1 points 8 months ago

I had issues with frame time spikes with my 6600xt as well. Biggest issue for me was the insane downclocking for a split second when card reaches the powerlimit, so running below or at the PL is fine but bouncing of it sucks ass.

In the end I just removed the power limits all together trough MPT and disabled some of the ds_ and C-States. Together with a +50mv offset its now smooth at a consistent 2900+MHz

Vram performance can also be increased marginally with more FCLK and SoC voltage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Never had this issue, I am not that knowledgeable in bios stuff myself but most of the setting I needed were easy to understand in a glance or had to look it up for a second. The rest remain untouched and PC just works with no issues. I would rather not have it changing sht automatically without my knowledge.

[–] bigmclargehuge 1 points 9 months ago

Not trying to be a dick but it's not really on the BIOS to conigure your hardware for you, it's on you to configure your BIOS (imo). Personally I prefer when my computer doesn't try to configure my shit for me, because if it gets it wrong all I can do is sit on my thumbs. If I configure it myself and get it wrong, well that's on me and I can learn from my mistakes.