Customer Reviews

Breaking Through the BIOS Barrier: The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide for PCs

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Unimpressive. I bought this to help with overclocking an Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard (launched mid 2006) and it didn't even mention most of the BIOS options I wanted to know about. The book advertises that it gives you 3 months access to the online Bios guide that is supposedly updated, but when I went online to activate that, it said the "promotion had expired". It's a dictionary of bios terms, not a guide. And the items covered are more pertinent to motherboards of 2004, not those made in 2007. One could use google or wikipedia and get the same or better explanations as those in this book.

When you are starting your computer if you hold down F8, or the DELETE key or perhaps some other key, you get into the BIOS setup routines. When you look at these screens you are presented with a bewildering array of optional settings. They are all, of course, clearly identified with some kind of gibberish like AGP to DRAM Prefetch.

This book is organized so that inside the front and back covers are a listing of the BIOS options. Looking up AGP to DRAM Prefetch you are told that there is a Quick Review on Page 40 and a Detailed Description on Page 169. And after a little reading you will understand what this option does, and why you probably want it enabled. About 250 BIOS options are explained in this manner. There have been many times in the past when having such a book would have been invaluable. It is clearly written using words that will make sense to the computer literate and those maybe one step above novice.

This book is little more than a glossary of BIOS entries which may or may not match the ones in your computer. If you purchased a computer within the last year, this book will be of no help. It does not cover PCIE cards or dual video-card platforms. The terms rarely match up to specific BIOS terms, so you have to read through to find what you are looking for. What's worse this book is organized alphabetically. This is just the glossary to a book that was never written. There is no logical layout that will let you know what you need. For example, why not group all of the topics that affect RAM in one? Discuss RAM and how your BIOS interacts with it? No, instead you have to look through until you can find the entry for the BIOS menu. If I had the exact BIOS Mr. Wong had when he wrote this, it would be useful. However, I don't. I have a more recent BIOS and without a guide to how the thing works and why, this glossary is useless. I got more out of the guide posted on Tom's Hardware than this book.

Inside it you will find everything you want and need to know about the BIOS. If you're an overclocker, it's indispensible. If you're just curious about what all those settings do, it's great. The author's website is well-known in the enthusiast community and for good reason. Buy it.

This guy knows his stuff. Plenty of information that can be practically applied. Recomended for anyone who is interested in tweaking or checking their Bios settings.

This is a keeper and Adrian is always updating his web site, some of the definitions and recommendations do bleed over into other MB BIOs. This is an over clockers book for sure. Of all my computer books I go to this one most often. What was that PCI VGA bus set at, and did I disable that dam spread spectrum? Adrian rally does try very hard to stay up to date and he get the job done, sooner of later.

Well described, easy to follow, but doesn't cover the newer features that are a part of many of todays BIOS... didn't really give me what I was looking for. Put together very well, though. No-nonsense reading.

If you are tired of spending hours trying to figure out what all those different BIOS settings do this is your book. This is the book that the motherboard manufacture should have supplied you with.

This book is for advanced user's only and not for the curious. If you don't know how to get into the BIOS on your computer, and what BIOS stands for then this isn't the book for you and should be left well enough alone. It is true that Adrian makes it sound simple but if you don't fully understand the changes your making you could seriously screw-up your computer, and the reason why companies like Dell make it harder to accidently access the BIOS on startup(crtl+alt+del) and not the freindly one key press on enthusiasts systems. I know that most of the people buying this book know this already but after reading the first review I felt a little caution should be excercised and not make it sound like it's as easy as operating a microwave.

This book may not cover every setting available on your motherboard but there is no other book that I know of that does. It's amazing to me that you get so little information about the bios even when you buy a brand new motherboard. You can hunt up some information online but this book is the best one I know of because it is the only one I know of that provides this information. I have used this book many times to help me set up my daughters, and others, computers. It's probably not very helpfull with some name brand PCs because they use a very restricted bios. If you fix or build your own PCs then you probably should get this book.