Dell Latitude 820 - tweaked default BIOS settings for performance and Intel VT

Posted on Thursday, October 19, 2006 10:23 AM

Out of curiosity I interrupted the boot of my new Dell Latitude 820. There were two default factory settings that needed adjusting:

  • Performance - HDD Acoustic Mode:
    1. Bypass (default) - Do nothing (needed for older drives)
    2. Quiet - Slower but quieter
    3. Performance - Faster but possibly noisier
  • POST Behavior - Virtualization: (sic)
    1. Off (default)
    2. Enabled

Clearly I changed the HDD Acoustic Mode to "Performance". This machine is equipped with a 7,200 rpm drive and I am guessing that spinning it slower makes it quieter. The background chatter of a busy HDD doesn't bother me, but hourglasses do!

With Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 B2 installed on my machine I had to enable Intel VT support now that Virtual Server will use it.

All in all, two performance options that *should* make my experience better, but I am not going to go through any exhaustive exercise to test the difference! The system is perfectly stable though - which is good news.