This week TechARP reveals the Byte Merge BIOS option, you can learn about it over here.
This BIOS feature is similar to the PCI Dynamic Bursting feature.
When enabled, the PCI write buffer accumulates and merges 8-bit and 16-bit writes into 32-bit writes. This increases the efficiency of the PCI bus and improves its bandwidth.
When disabled, the PCI write buffer will not accumulate or merge 8-bit or 16-bit writes. It will just write them to the PCI bus as soon as the bus is free. As such, there may be a loss of PCI bus efficiency when 8-bit or 16-bit data is written to the PCI bus.
Therefore, it is recommended that you enable Byte Merge for better performance.
However, please note that Byte Merge may be incompatible with certain PCI network interface cards (also known as NICs). So, if your NIC won't work properly, try disabling this feature.
