begins with BIOS POSTing (Power On Self Testing) which is going to take the same amount of time regardless of whether the graphic is showing or not. POSTing consists of checking the keyboard, the keyboard controller, the CPU, initializing the chipset, verifying the RTC, the ROM BIOS checksum, initializing the video, DMA, memory, video memory, CMOS battery, CMOS checksum, testing memory, detection of serial, parallel, and USB ports, initializing internal and external cache, IRQ vector tables and a host of other little behind the scenes critical system checks.
It is only AFTER POSTing that booting the OS actually begins and you can lengthen or shorten that by choices in how your specific system is set up and what services and drivers you choose to load at boot or automatically.
Information available at this link can assist you on optimizing POSTing
http://www.sysopt.com/features/mboard/article.php/3549966
Again and in short, that Dell graphic has absolutely nothing to do with the time it takes for the boot process to begin nor the length of time it takes to boot to the functional OS.
I have a Dell Dimension 4400, windows xp home, 1.6 ghz and I am wondering how to get my PC to boot directly to windows instead of displaying the Dell logo for what seems to be forever. I followed the instructions from the dell site and now instead of the giant Dell logo on my screen I get a smaller version with all my basic system info displayed and the dell logo in the upper right hand corner. Same amount of wait time seems to apply 
Would appreciate any help in this matter..ty.
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