Asus has released a BIOS update for the Eee PC 1000HE netbook which some users are reporting frees up additional memory for video. In other words, it does a slightly better job with high definition video playback and some games and other graphics intensive tasks.

EeeUser Forums member Cms posted the benchmarks shown above, as well as benchmarks for the same computer with an earlier BIOS version. For good measure, he also overclocked his Eee PC to run at 1.9GHz and got even more impressive results. But what do these benchmarks mean when it comes to real world conditions? Basically you should be able to watch standard definition and 480p videos on Hulu without any problem. Netflix videos play smoothly, and YouTube HD videos are still choppy, but they do play better with the new BIOS.

On the down side, the 802 BIOS appears to remove support for Dolby sound. So if you care more about audio than video you might want to hold off on upgrading the BIOS.