As a world-leading motherboards brand, MSI commits to deliver gamers and creators genuine pleasure, and will keep moving. BIOS update is always an exhilarating news for most users, so MSI keeps announcing relative news for our users. From this week, MSI will release AMD AGESA COMBO PI V2 1.1.0.0 Patch D BIOS for all AMD 400-series motherboards and it is expected to be completely uploaded before the end of 2020.

All AMD 400-Series Motherboards Comprehensively Support Ryzen 5000 CPU with AMD AGESA COMBO PI V2 1.1.0.0 Patch D
The purpose to keep releasing BIOS update is not only for increasing motherboards performance but also for better compatibilities. After AMD launches Ryzen 5000 CPU, most are inquisitive about whether Ryzen 5000 CPU is compatible with AMD previous platforms. MSI realizes that users are eager to enhance their motherboards with the latest CPU; therefore, we are determined to offer AGESA 1.1.0.0 Patch D for all AMD 400-series motherboards. With AGESA 1.1.0.0 Patch D, your 400-series motherboards can support Ryzen 5000 CPU and achieve its true performance. Since there are some technical issues on AGESA 1.1.8.0, it will not be released. Thus, AGESA 1.1.0.0. Patch D is the finest choice to update your motherboards.

When AMD announced its 5000 series Ryzen processors, the company has noted that the new CPUs will be able to operate only on the 500 and 400 series chipsets, with a simple BIOS update. That means that millions of motherboards can install the latest CPUs with no problems. Today, we get to see something that is not a usual thing. ASRock has prepared a BIOS for its X370 Taichi motherboard, and it has been leaked at jzelectronic.de. The newly leaked BIOS is said to bring support for AMD's Ryzen 5000 series of processors codenamed Vermeer. Yes, you are reading that right. ASRock has found a way to bring Vermeer to the unsupported X370 platform.

Although impressive, you must note that the BIOS is in the alpha stage of development, which means that it is enriched with possible bugs and glitches, so it is not recommended for use for now. AMD is against this, and said for Tom's Hardware that "AMD has no plans to enable or support AMD Ryzen 5000 series on AMD 300 series chipsets." That means that ASRock has produced one-off software and it is still a question will the company further develop this new "P6.61" BIOS. You can download it at the jzelectronic.de website but proceed with caution.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, announced today the latest BIOS released on the website for the AMD X470 and B450 motherboards to ensure the most comprehensive compatibility and reliability with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors on their motherboards.

GIGABYTE has been released the BIOS for enhancing performance of AMD 500 series motherboards as soon as AMD announced the Ryzen 5000 series processors. Meanwhile, GIGABYTE announced to release updated BIOS for non-AMD 500 series motherboards users in near future so they can enjoy the AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors at their full potential with all the new functions and capabilities the latest CPUs bring.

ASRock has released a BIOS update for their Z490 Taichi motherboard which implements a Clever Access Memory (CAM) system (might I say that's as clever as it sounds?) CAM is basically ASRock's own marketing push based on AMD's SAM, which is in itself a marketing push based on PCIe's Resizable BAR feature (the amount of marketing names employed to describe the same set of features is becoming mind-boggling). The feature is available through the 1.72 BETA Bios for the Z490 Taichi motherboard, and WCCFTech ran some quick and dirty tests on a Z490-based system with an AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card to verify what (if any) performance differences arose.

The tests were done at 4K resolution for Shadows of the Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, running on an Intel Core i7-10700K processor and 2x 8 GB sticks of DDR4-2666 memory. The results? 3.32% performance improvement under Shadows of the Tomb Raider, and an impressive 11.54% improvement for Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (images to the left feature CAM on, and images on the right show CAM off). It seems it's only a matter of time until this amazing feature that's been available (yet untapped) for years now brings some very considerable and widespread performance improvements to users independent of platform. Kinda like finding a $10 bill in an old pair of jeans.

When AMD introduced its Smart Access Memory technology, everyone was wondering will other GPU and CPU providers, namely Intel and NVIDIA, develop a similar solution to complement their offerings. The SAM technology is just AMD's way of naming PCIe resizable Base Address Register (BAR) technology, which has been present in PCI specifications for years as an optional feature. Why it's emerging now you might wonder. Well, the currently used PCIe revision has reached enough bandwidth on the bus to complement the complex data movement that GPU requires and now supports the use of the wider VRAM frame buffer.

It appears that not only AMD has this technology in its portfolio. ASUS has updated its BIOS firmware for its ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard based on the Intel Z490 chipset, with some pretty interesting features. According to Tom's Hardware, we have information that the next release of BIOS firmware update 1003 for the ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard will bring support for resizable BAR, making it a first on an Intel platform. For now, the beta 1002 BIOS supports it, however, a stable version will roll out in BIOS 1003. With the motherboard using PCIe 3.0 standard, a lower-bandwidth revision compared to AMD's platform, it will be interesting to see how resizable BAR is performing once the first tests come.

Update 09:45 am UTC: Chris Wefers, ASUS PR Germany, has announced that resizable BAR will be coming to all ASUS motherboards with Intel Z490/H470/B460 chipset, with alleged 13.37% performance increase in Forza Horizon 4, per ASUSes testing. You can see the test configuration in the image below.

AMD has announced they will be introducing Adaptive Undervolting tools for their precision Boost Overdrive software, available for the latest Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. This feature will be made available come launch of AGESA 1180 on 400-series and 500-series motherboards (estimated availability in early December), and will require a BIOS update to enable at the software level. According to AMD, this tool will dynamically calculate the precise amount of voltage required for a given task, analyzing internal sensors (such as workload, temperature, socket limits) and adapting voltage values on the fly at up to 1000 times a second.

This approach by AMD will bring a new age for CPU undervolting, which usually only allows for users to undervolt their CPU on the basis of the worst-case scenario: usually, the way undervolters work is by incrementally reducing the CPU's voltage and testing for stability via stress applications, gaming, or other specialized applications. This means that the CPU will have adequate juice so as not to fail in these scenarios - but of course, your CPU isn't always (in fact, it's almost never, depending on your specific use-case) using the full CPU processing power; this means that all other workloads where the CPU isn't under 100% utilization still have room for voltage reductions. With AMD's Adaptive Undervolting, this will now become possible.

The global leading motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, announces its AMD B450 motherboards series will support next generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors via BIOS update. The latest AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors come with a full suite of latest technologies designed to boost your PC's processing power. Update to the latest BIOS and get ready for the ultimate performance as well as latest technologies with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors!

MSI, a world-leading motherboard manufacturer, announces support for AMD's new SMART ACCESS MEMORY feature. SMART ACCESS MEMORY is an innovative feature. It allows the system to access the full capacity of the VRAM on the graphics card. Compare to the current solution which has 256 MB access limitation, this feature will provide the users better gaming experience.

For MSI motherboard users, enabling SMART ACCESS MEMORY is quite simple. It only takes a few clicks after updating the BIOS. Go to "Settings > Advanced > PCI Subsystem Settings", enable "Re-size BAR" and "Above 4G memory/Crypto Currency mining", press "F10", to save the settings and reboot. The requirement of this feature is pairing the AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card with AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processor. And don't forget to update the graphics card driver to the latest version as well. After these steps, this feature is online and ready to boost the gaming performance.

When AMD initially announced that their next-generation Ryzen processors would only support 500 series motherboards they faced significant backlash and were forced to include 400 series motherboard support. The reason AMD cited at the time was the limitations in some flash chips not containing enough space to store the information for all processors, several motherboard manufacturers encountered this issue with Ryzen 3000 bios updates where they needed to reduce graphical elements in their BIOS.

An overclock.net forum user by the name Brko has recently claimed that Zen 3 processors can run on a GIGABYTE X370 motherboard with a beta BIOS and AGESA update. This claim has been partially validated by chm128256m who got a Ryzen 9 5900X to run on his modded ASRock A320M motherboard. AMD is extremely unlikely to officially support this backwards compatibility with 300 series motherboards given their previous statements. It will be interesting to see if any OEMs provide backward compatibility updates and any issues that may arise.

EVGA has today published the "XOC" BIOS version for its GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics cards. The XOC BIOS version is designed for "extreme overclocking" purposes, as it boosts the power limit of the card by very a few additional Watts. This allows the overclockers to use the card to its full potential so the GPU core is not limited by power. To run XOC BIOS on your GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 GPU card, you need to have an adequate cooling solution and sufficient power supply. For power, EVGA recommends that you use at least 850w+ Gold PSU, at minimum. This is a sign that shows that XOC bios will boost the system power consumption by quite a bit. The XOC BIOS is enabling the GPU to have a power limit of 500 Watts. It is important to note that EVGA does not guarantee any performance increase or overclock while using this BIOS update.

You can download the EVGA XOC BIOS for GeForce RTX 3090 FTW3 graphics card here. To install it, unzip the file, run Update.exe, and after updating restart your PC. That is the complete update process for the BIOS update. EVGA uploads both the normal BIOS (so you can revert) and XOC BIOS there so be careful when choosing the right files. You can use TechPowerUp GPU-Z tool to verify the BIOS install.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces that their AM4 400 series motherboards will support the latest generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Vermeer series Zen 3 processors. BIOS updates supporting the AMD Ryzen 5000 Vermeer series processors on BIOSTAR AM4 400 series motherboards will be available starting January 2021. The details will be subject to BIOSTAR official website announcement.

Intel today unveiled the suite of new security features for the upcoming 3rd generation Intel Xeon Scalable platform, code-named "Ice Lake." Intel is doubling down on its Security First Pledge, bringing its pioneering and proven Intel Software Guard Extension (Intel SGX) to the full spectrum of Ice Lake platforms, along with new features that include Intel Total Memory Encryption (Intel TME), Intel Platform Firmware Resilience (Intel PFR) and new cryptographic accelerators to strengthen the platform and improve the overall confidentiality and integrity of data.

Data is a critical asset both in terms of the business value it may yield and the personal information that must be protected, so cybersecurity is a top concern. The security features in Ice Lake enable Intel's customers to develop solutions that help improve their security posture and reduce risks related to privacy and compliance, such as regulated data in financial services and healthcare.

Today there is some quite interesting information circulating the web regarding ASUS and its alleged decision. Going a few months back, AMD released a statement regarding the support for its upcoming Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and said that it should enable compatibility with the last-generation X470 and B450 chipset. That, however, has remained a bit of mystery. The update is baked-in with the BIOS, which every manufacturer, like MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. provides independently of AMD. So it is a manufacturer-dependant case, where if one vendor chooses not to provide support for 400 series chipsets, many motherboards will not support new CPU generation.

Update Oct 14th: ASUS has reached out to us and said that "ASUS will provide updated BIOS' for the X470 and B450 chipsets based on AMD's current release schedule of new AGESA code in January 2021. This original report was based on incorrect information." This means that the customer support case contained wrong information, and ASUS is going to support 5000 series Ryzen CPUs on 400 series chipsets. Please note that the information below is incorrect.

The global leading motherboard manufacturer, ASRock, announces its AMD X570/B550/A520 motherboards series will support next generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors via BIOS update. The next generation processors come with a full suite of technologies designed to elevate your PC's processing power. Update to the latest BIOS and get ready for the unmatched performance as well as latest technologies with AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors.

Look for the following BIOS version numbers in the downloads section of the product page of your motherboard on the ASRock website.

MSI began rolling out UEFI firmware updates that pack AMD's latest AGESA Combo PI V2 1.0.8.1 microcode, for the company's Socket AM4 motherboards based on the AMD 500-series chipsets. The company released firmware updates for 9 of its B550 motherboards today. Some time mid-September, it plans to release updates for X570 chipset boards, and the rest of its B550 motherboards. By late-September, updates will be released for A520 chipset boards.

MSI says AGESA V2 1.0.8.1 improves memory compatibility and memory overclocking headroom, and supports UMA memory share control for Ryzen 4000G / PRO 4000G "Renoir" desktop processors. MSI added fixes specific to its products, such as Soft RAID issues on B550, and PCs refusing to resume from S3 state. Check the "support" section of your motherboard's product page on the MSI website for the new firmware updates.

Even if you don't have more than one operating system installed, your PC has a boot-loader, a software component first executed by the system BIOS, which decides which operating system to boot with. This also lets users toggle between different run-levels or configurations of the same OS. The GRUB2 boot-loader is deployed across billions of computers, servers, and pretty much any device that uses a Unix-like operating system. Cybersecurity researchers with Oregon-based firm Eclypsium, discovered a critical vulnerability with GRUB2 that can compromise a device's operating system. They named the vulnerability BootHole. This is the same firm behind last year's discovery of the Screwed Drivers vulnerability. It affects any device that uses the GRUB2 boot-loader, including when combined with Secure Boot technology.

BootHole exploits a design flaw with two of the key components of GRUB2, bison, a parser generator, and flex, a lexical analyzer. Eclypsium discovered that these two can have "mismatched design assumptions" that can lead to buffer overflow. This buffer overflow can be exploited to execute arbitrary code. Devices with modern UEFI and Secure Boot enabled typically wall off even administrative privileged users off from tampering with boot processes, however, in case of BootHole, the boot-loader parses a configuration file located in the EFI partition of the boot device, which can be modified by any user (or malicious process) that has admin privileges. Thankfully, patched versions of GRUB2 are already out, and the likes of SUSE have started distributing it for all versions of SUSE Linux. Expect practically every other *nix vendor, server manufacturer, to release patches to their end-users. Find a technical run-down of the vulnerability in this PDF by Eclypsium.

Microsoft has announced an extension to the Windows Defender System Guard which will allow it to also verify and guarantee integryity of systems at a UEFI BIOS level. Citing an increase in hardware and firmware-level attacks over the years, the extended protection functionality aims to guarantee protection across the entire hierarchy of a device, from firmware up through to cloud processing.

The UEFI scanner is a new component of the built-in antivirus solution on Windows 10 and gives Microsoft Defender ATP the unique ability to scan inside of the firmware filesystem and perform security assessment. Working in conjunction with your systems' chipset, the UEFI scanner features a three-pronged solution to firmware security: UEFI anti-rootkit, which reaches the firmware through Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI); Full filesystem scanner, which analyzes content inside the firmware; and a Detection engine, which identifies exploits and malicious behaviors.

BIOSTAR, a leading brand of motherboards, graphics cards, and storage devices, today announces product support for the latest AMD RYZEN 3000 XT series processors.

AMD's latest refresh of their RYZEN 3000XT series desktop processors has taken the market in storm providing higher clock speeds designed on the highly stable Zen 2 architecture. Built on AMD's B550 and A520 chipsets, AMD has expanded the 3rd Gen Ryzen processor range with a wider selection for consumers with the addition of the new XT range which consists of 3 new processors, the Ryzen 9 3900XT, AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT and AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT processors.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards, and hardware solutions, today announce the latest BIOS update of AMD platform motherboards. To ensure users can embrace the performance boost, high compatibility, and high stability of 3rd Gen. AMD Ryzen XT Series desktop processors.

In order to furnish the best performance and user experience, AMD has been working closely with GIGABYTE and other motherboard vendors to provide BIOS code updates regularly for optimizing system performance or solving the issues verified by motherboard vendors. Adapted to the latest 3rd gen. are AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT,Ryzen 7 3800XT, Ryzen 5 3600XT processors. AMD provides AGESA ComboV2 1.0.0.2 BIOS for X570 and B550 chipset motherboards, and AGESA ComboV1 1.0.0.6 BIOS for X470, B450,X370, B350, and A320 chipsets products.

AMD is readying the PRO565 desktop motherboard chipset. Mention of the chipset surfaced in screenshots of the latest AMD CBS (common BIOS settings) lists of an ASRock motherboard, unearthed by Komachi Ensaka. Not much else is known about the AMD PRO 565. We expect it to be the key component of a business platform rivaling the Intel Q470, enabling several large business-relevant management features. AMD is making efforts to rival Intel vPro, as seen with its Ryzen 4000 Pro series mobile processors targeted at commercial notebooks with quasi-enterprise features. AMD's current crop of Ryzen PRO processors features GuardMI. It's likely that AMD will crystallize its "PRO" feature-set further with the PRO565 possibly enabling new features with the Ryzen PRO 3000 series desktop processors, or their "Renoir" based successors.

ASUS and Janus Technologies Inc. today announced the launch of the new ASUS ExpertBook P5440FA laptop with BIOS-SHIELD technology. The two companies have teamed up to deliver a feature rich security solution and cloud service for small to mid-size businesses and their remote workers. Using BIOS-SHIELD technology embedded within the ASUS ExpertBook P5440FA, businesses will be able to manage PCs remotely while adding extensive security capabilities to each endpoint. The ASUS ExpertBook P5440FA-54-SHD is the first model within the ExpertBook P-Series family to include BIOS-SHIELD technology.

AMD finally got around to officially talking about its sneaky last-minute specs update of the Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card, which saw its memory frequency increased to 14 Gbps from its original 12 Gbps, in a bid to make it competitive against the price-cut GeForce RTX 2060. In a blog post subheaded "Unlock the full potential of your Radeon RX 5600 XT today," AMD tabulated all the graphics cards eligible for a video BIOS update that increases memory- and GPU clock speeds; along with links to support pages on their manufacturer website. We already made such a list. The AMD table also lists out certain custom-design cards that come with 14 Gbps memory out of the box, for which a BIOS update isn't needed. Find the table in the AMD blog post here.

Back in January, AMD released its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card with a last-minute specifications update that made it competitive with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card. It did so by increasing GPU clock speeds, and more importantly, increasing memory clock speeds to 14 Gbps up from 12 Gbps in the original spec. Various AMD add-in board (AIB) partners released one-click BIOS updates on January 22nd (find them for ASRock, Sapphire, MSI, PowerColor, and Gigabyte). An easy updater from ASUS was missing in action at the time. The company finally got around to releasing easy, Windows-based programs that update the video BIOS of its ROG Strix Radeon RX 5600 XT O6G and TUF Gaming RX 5600 XT EVO OC graphics cards. The BIOS updates run the video memory at 14 Gbps since the cards physically do feature 14 Gbps-rated memory chips. The specifications update has had a profound impact on the price-performance positioning of the RX 5600 XT, from being able to outperform the GTX 1660 Ti to trading blows with the RTX 2060. Grab the BIOS update from the links below.

DOWNLOAD: ASUS RX 5600 XT Easy BIOS Updates for ROG Strix RX 5600 XT O6G | TUF Gaming RX 5600 XT EVO OC

MSI, a world-leading motherboard manufacturer, proudly introduces two new B450 MAX motherboards, B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI and B450M BAZOOKA MAX WIFI. For the 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, the new MAX motherboards are optimized with best compatibility in every aspects. These two new MAX motherboards can satisfy more gamers and users.

As the most iconic motherboard for mainstream gamers, this time GAMING PRO CARBON also includes a MAX version for stylish gamers to perfectly match with 3rd Gen Ryzen processors. With millions colors and 17 LED effects, Mystic Light offers customization options for ever-changing RGB experience. B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI is also equipped with USB 3.2 Gen2 solution with up to 10 Gbps transfer speed. Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 3 provides stable and high quality sound effects with premium components. Furthermore, concerning the higher performance-based 3rd Gen Ryzen processors, B450 GAMING PRO CARBON MAX WIFI includes Extended Heatsink Design and M.2 Shield to ensure better heat dissipation effects and lower temperature for CPUs and M.2 devices. Flash BIOS Button becomes more and more important and gives more convenience for BIOS updates.

GIGABYTE late-Tuesday released a video BIOS update for its Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming OC graphics card (model: GV-R56XTGAMING OC-6GD). The new FA0 video BIOS increases TGP of the card to a massive 180 W (up from 150 W original spec), gaming clocks up to 1670 MHz, boost clocks up to 1750 MHz, and memory clocks up to 14 Gbps (GDDR6-effective), up from 12 Gbps. Gigabyte's BIOS update package for the RX 5600 XT Gaming OC includes a Windows-based GUI updater that's a lot easier to use than manually updating the BIOS using ATIWinFlash. Grab the update package from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: GIGABYTE RX 5600 XT Gaming OC New FA0 BIOS Update