just thought i'd toss my 2 cents in here. there were two bios' floating around for the Barcelona before release...one offered significantly more performance than the other but it wasn't production. the actual pre-production bios was more consistent in performance (i.e. perf wasn't wildly across the spectrum) but was "slower" in measurable performance.

yes, BIOS' can have significant performance impact on CPUs.

in any case, i'm still trying to work through some day job work but if anyone's in Chicago on this coming wednesday night, let me know...I'll be in town.

dave