Most Advanced Chipset Setup configurations are restricted to a standard configuration and you can only change these configurations if you disable the existing Auto Configuration or Auto Config. This happens because the configurations of this menu involve the time base and all sort of configurations of this kind may freeze the computer if wrongly set.

Therefore, if you don't want to take any risks, the safest is to enable automatic configuration and not changing any of the configurations that may have been far from optimum.

Among the several options involving time base options are the wait states configurations. Wait states are clock pulses that are added to the memory reading or writing cycles in order to match the processor speed with RAM memory speed, as RAM is much slower than processor. During the wait state clock pulses processor doesn't do absolutely nothing, it stays waiting for RAM memory to be ready to receive or send data. Therefore wait states decreases computer performance. However processor can't access RAM directly, without using wait states.

But the less wait states the processor uses, the better. This means that you can try to reduce the number of wait states to get a little more computer performance. The Automatic Configuration doesn't rate the best wait state values, but rather it sets values that safely won't freeze the computer. Therefore there is a chance to decrease the number of wait states keep computer from freezing.

If you decide to decrease the wait states, disable the Auto Config option and decrease the number of wait states used for each option, one at a time. For example imagine that CAS Read Wait State option is set as 4 - that is, using 4 wait states. You can decrease this value to 3, save the changes and try to use the computer to check if it won't freeze. If it freezes, you must restart the computer enter setup and undo the last change done. In case the computer doesn't freeze you must try to decrease even more this number, repeating all process until the ideal number is found, which is always one before computer freezes.

But do not try to change lots of options simultaneously, because if computer freezes you will not know which of the options is freezing the computer. The wait states final adjustments must be done individually for each existing option. It is a lengthy process, but it can bring an extra performance to the computer.

If you don't feel inclined for such patient jobs or if don't have the necessary time to do it, don't worry: just enable the Auto Configuration option and forget about this story of wait states adjustments.

The main wait state adjustment options are:

• CAS Read Wait State or DRAM Read Wait States: Number of wait states used in RAM memory reading.
• CAS Write Wait State or DRAM Write Wait States or DRAM Wait State Select or DRAM Write CAS Pulse: Same but for writing into memory.
• Memory Wait State or DRAM Wait State: Some setup display just a single option for the wait state adjustments.
• DRAM Speed Option: In some setups, the number of wait states may not be presented in numerical form, but by means of labels: Fastest (0 wait state), Faster (1 wait state), Slower (2 wait states) and Slowest (3 wait states). By means of this option you adjust the number of wait states just like the options presented earlier. For example, to set it up as Faster is equivalent to set it as 1 wait state.