Satisfiability modulo theories solvers serve as the backbone of software verifiers, static analyzers, and proof assistants; the versatile bit-vector arithmetic theory is particularly important for these applications. As solvers continue to be developed, they become more capable but also more difficult to configure optimally. The widely-used Z3 prover offers a multitude of configurable techniques for solving bit-vector problems, however, the pace of development has not allowed for a comprehensive comparative analysis of them. We study the available bit-vector algorithms and parallelization methods, on established sets of problems. Through an experimental evaluation, we find that properly configuring Z3 for a specific use case can have significant effects on performance. We offer guidance to developers on how to go about that, which should help to make formal verification tools more efficient.