What are the recommended BIOS settings for my motherboard to give me the best experience and or near best performance that my machine will run ok at.i am quite new to all this,have just recently built my first machine but am not sure what alterations if any to make in the bios..cheers...andy

ASUS A8N SLI DELUXE SKT 939

ATHLON 64 3800+ VENICE

250gb MAXTOR DIAMONDMAX 10 SATA 16mb

1 GB CORSAIR TWIN MATCHED MEMORY

2X WINFAST 6600GT SLI GRAPHICS

NEC 3540A 16xDUAL LAYER DVD RW

PHILLIPS 8421 DVD RW

THERMALTAKE TWV 500W PURE POWER PSU

MICROSOFT WIRELESS KEYBOARD & MOUSE

WINDOWS XP PRO

Do you plan on overclocking, or just fastest stock settings?

no i do not plan to overclock as i do not have a clue how to,,i am just looking for as you call it fastest stock settings...cheers ..andy

I actually just used that motherboard in a build, but my friend took it before I could mess with it.

If the memory is set to auto-detect, make sure that the speeds match what your memory is (you can check on the website for your RAM). If your RAM is rated for 2-2-2-5, and your BIOS picks it up as 2.5-4-4-7, for example, then manually go in and change the speeds to what is rated on the website. Also change the memory command rate to 1T from 2T, which is what motherboards will load memory as for safety reasons. You'll notice a considerable increase in performance, about 15-20%, just from the 2T to 1T change, particularly with AMD which is much more sensitive to memory timings. There are some other tweaks, but they are very minor in terms of real world performance, unless you want the highest scores in benchmarks.

i will give this a try and let you know how i get on...cheers andy..

Done the changes that you suggested and yes it has helped,if you can think of anything else i would be really greatful.thanks very much really appreciate your help

try setting the boot order, to boot from the hard drive first instead of the floppy.