In what is turning out to be a massive QA oversight by AMD, people who bought retail Radeon VII graphics cards report that their cards don't support UEFI, and that installing the card in their machines causes their motherboard to engage CSM (compatibility support module), a key component of UEFI firmware that's needed to boot the machine with UEFI-unaware hardware (such as old storage devices, graphics cards, NICs, etc.,).

To verify this claim, we put the stock video BIOS of our Radeon VII sample in a hex editor, and what we found out startled us. The BIOS completely lacks UEFI support, including a GOP (graphics output protocol) driver. A GOP driver is a wafer-thin display driver that runs basic display functions on your GPU during the pre-boot environment. Without UEFI support for the graphics card (i.e. with CSM running), Windows 10 cannot engage Secure Boot. Since UEFI Secure Boot is a requirement for Microsoft Windows 10 Logo certification, we are having doubts whether AMD can really claim "Windows 10 compatible" for Radeon VII, at least until a BIOS update is available.

MSI late November released BIOS updates for its entire range of socket AM4 motherboards, mainly to include AGESA 1.0.0.6, which improves memory compatibility. The updates also pack various motherboard model-specific fixes. Apparently there has been a goof-up with this update (not in a bad way, though). The latest BIOS updates "accidentally" unlock the otherwise locked Athlon 200GE dual-core processor with integrated graphics.

No, you won't get more cores or iGPU stream processors, but the base-clock multiplier letting you easily overclock the processor is now unlocked. This adds value to the $55 processor, given that competing Celeron and Pentium Gold SKUs are overpriced in the market these days. In their overclocking adventures with the 200GE paired with a MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard, TechSpot observed that the chip (which is clocked at 3.2 GHz by default) wouldn't POST beyond 3.90 GHz, and that you need vCore at 1.4 V to sustain even 3.90 GHz. They found 3.80 GHz at 1.35 V to be 100% stable (an 18.75% overclock). The memory clocks are still restricted to DDR4-2666, although you can still play with timings.

With the latest release of NVIDIA's NVFlash, version 5.513.0, users can now read and write the BIOS on Turing based graphics cards. This includes the RTX 2080 Ti, 2080, and 2070. While this may seem mundane at first, due to the different power limits between graphics cards, there is some hope that cross flashing of the BIOS could result in tangible performance gains.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA NVFlash v5.513.0

The X299 MICRO ATX 2 is a reimagined mATX board designed to support the power, performance, and cooling necessary to power Intel's i5/i7/i9 CPU's for the X299 Chipset. With a 14 Phase power design, a thick VRM heatsink/fan, two 8 pin EPS power connectors, an additional 6 pin PCIe power connector, and external BCLK, this motherboard was born for the enthusiast desiring maximum power in a small form factor. The X299 MICRO ATX 2 supports current storage standards, including M.2 NVMe, Intel Optane, Intel VROC and SATA 6Gb/s to give you a blazing fast access to your data, while Intel Dual-Band WIFI/BT and an Intel i219V Gigabit NIC Keeps you connected.

ASUS announced that it is releasing motherboard BIOS updates that add 9th generation Core "Whiskey Lake" processor compatibility for almost its entire Intel 300-series chipset motherboard family. This includes models based on H310, B360, Q370, and H370 chipsets, and not just the top Z370. Intel is expected to debut its 9th generation Core processor family with three SKUs later this year: the Core i9-9900K, the Core i7-9700K, and the Core i5-9600K. The tables below list motherboard models alongside the minimum BIOS version you'll need for "Whiskey Lake" compatibility. You'll find your BIOS in the "support" tab of the product page of your motherboard on ASUS website.

GIGABYTE has announced via a news post on its official website that it will be offering BIOS updates for its motherboards which bring support for Intel's upcoming 9000-series CPUs. Much like MSI did, GIGABYTE's engineering teams have developed BIOS updates for the Z370, H370, B360, H310 motherboards to provide the best support for Intel's next-gen CPUs - again, with no information on core-count support at all.

The newest BIOS updates are now available on the official GIGABYTE website for users to download and upgrade their systems. GIGABYTE has pledged to continue to release new BIOS updates for the best system performance and stability.

MSI has put up a news item announcing support for Intel's 9000 series CPUs on their Z370 motherboards. The announcement has, in the meantime, been promptly pulled, for whatever reason. Alongside the announcement for MSI's Z370 motherboards being "Optimized for Intel 9000 processors", the company released a list of 15 motherboard models in its lineup that sport the Z370 chipset which will receive BIOS updates to bring them up to speed, support-wise, with Intel's 9000 series.

Of course, there's a small hitch here: the wording in the promotional image isn't quite clear-cut in regards to exactly up to which core counts will actually be supported. The promo image speaks of "next-gen six-core CPU support", which may mean that only up to six-core, i5-tier Intel 9000 series CPUs will be supported, with the 8-core, 16-thread i9 lineup being a premium, Z390-only product. That would certainly play into Intel's usual way of doing things - they do have to justify the introduction of a new chipset, anyway. We'll have to wait and see - likely for some time, if the latest Intel roadmaps are any indication.

Legendary soft-modder Regeneration released a vast collection of motherboard BIOS updates for socket LGA1366 motherboards based on Intel X58 Express chipset, because motherboard manufacturers have abandoned the 10-year old platform (yeah, it's been a decade since "Nehalem"!). The BIOSes have been made by transplanting the latest micro-code updates by Intel, which run all the way back to the 1st generation Core micro-architecture.

These are unofficial BIOSes which you use at your own risk, but they've been made by a person with more than two decades of fanfare in the PC enthusiast community, famous for unofficial, performance-enhancing NGO VGA drivers from his now defunct blog NGOHQ.com. Find the links to the BIOS of your X58 motherboard in this thread on TechPowerUp Forums (hosted externally).

German professional overclocker Dancop got the Intel Core i7-8700K processor to work on an ASUS ROG Maximus IX Apex (Z270) motherboard, something that's not supposed to work. CPU-Z screenshots seem to confirm this unholy union between the 6-core "Coffee Lake" processor and a 200-series chipset motherboard, using a custom "0084" BIOS dated 11th June, 2018. Dancop then proceeded to overclock the chip to 7344 MHz using extreme cooling, and 2x 8 GB (dual-channel) DDR4-4000 memory. This bench-stable build was then used to bag a SuperPi 32M world-record.

There's a rather big catch, though. Half the cores on the i7-8700K were disabled, and so was HyperThreading (not that it's relevant to SuperPi). The 3-core/3-thread chip was still bench-stable at 7344 MHz, crunching SuperPi 32M in a world-record 7.609 seconds. The clock speed was achieved by dialing up the multiplier to 73.0x, with the base-clock probably untouched, at 100.61 MHz (with the +0.61 MHz probably being variance). Supporting this clock was a blistering core voltage of 1.984 V. A liquid-nitrogen evaporator was used to tame the CPU and motherboard VRM. Find the validation in the source link below.

Current AMD AM4 motherboards basically support four platforms at the moment: the new Ryzen 2000 processors, Ryzen 2000 G APUs with integrated graphics, 1st generation Ryzen and Bristol Ridge. Bristol Ridge was AMD's last processor generation before Ryzen was released. Bristol Ridge introduced Socket AM4, which according to AMD has a lifespan beyond 2020. According to Anandtech, several motherboard manufacturers are now reporting that they might drop support for Bristol Ridge in their future motherboard releases. The underlying reason is that in addition to the setup interface, and UEFI with its driver and network stack, the BIOS has to support all processors by including microcode for them.

Supporting so many CPU models bloats the size of the BIOS beyond 128 megabits (16 MB), which would exceed the capacity of the BIOS flash chips used by most vendors and force them to use higher capacity models, ie 256 megabits. As always in this industry, the issue here comes down to pricing.

A ChipHell forum user has done what probably others have already done in relative obscurity: trying (and succeeding) to flash a Vega 64 BIOS onto a Vega 56 graphics card. The result? Well, apparently the shaders won't unlock (at least not according to our very own GPU-Z), but interestingly, performance improves all the same. The lesser amount of shaders on the Vega 56 silicon (3585 Shaders / 224 TMUs / 64 ROPs compared to Vega 64's 4096 / 256 / 64 apparently doesn't hinder performance that much. It appears that the improved clockspeeds of Vega 56 after the BIOS flash do more than enough to offset performance loss from the lesser amount of compute resources available, bumping RX Vega's clock speeds of 1471 MHz core boost clock and 800 MHz HBM2 memory up to Vega 64's 1545 MHz core boost clock and 945 MHz HBM2 clock.

This means that Vega 56 can effectively become a Vega 64 in performance (at least where 3D Mark Fire Strike is concerned), which isn't unheard of in the relationship between AMD's top tier and second-best graphics cards. Now naturally, some Vega 56 samples may even be further overclocked than Vega 64's stock clocks, which means that there is the potential for Vega 56 to have even better performance than Vega 64. The BIOS swap should allow Vega 56 to access higher power states than its stock BIOS allows, which is one of the reasons it can unlock higher core and memory clocks than an overclocked, original BIOS Vega 56 would. However, the fact that a Vega 56 at Vega 64 clocks and a Vega 64 deliver around the same score in benchmarks definitely does raise questions on how well the extra computing resources of Vega 64 are being put to use.

In this issue of the Ryzen BIOS update digest, we have the latest updates. Our BIOS update digest lets you keep track of crucial BIOS updates that improve stability of your AMD Ryzen machine. As per usual, only updated BIOSes from the last digest are listed. Changes are listed after each BIOS, sans beta BIOSes which do not always include change logs. You can find it all below.

In this release, we have several new betas, mostly all consisting of fresh AGESA 1.0.0.6a code.

Disclaimer things first: take this with a grain of salt, since this hasn't seen the amount of confirmations we'd like. 3D Center has come out with a table that supposedly demonstrates the schedule of RX Vega manufacturing and integration work from AMD's add-in-board partners (which includes the likes of Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, and others.) Remember that manufacturers receive a suggested reference design from AMD as to how to incorporate their GPUs into an actually operable graphics card, with varying degrees of customization according to the particular partner we're talking about. And this process takes time.

According to the leaked schedule, the BOM (Bill Of Materials) for the required parts to properly manufacture an RX Vega graphics card was to be released sometime in June, with engineering validation tests going through the end of June towards the beginning of this month (July.) Actual working samples from AIB partners are scheduled to be available in the middle of this month, with product validation tests (PVT) stretching towards the beginning of August (you'll remember AMD has confirmed they'll be formally announcing the RX Vega graphics card(s) at SIGGRAPH 2017, which stretches through July 30th and August 3rd.)

In this issue of the Ryzen BIOS update digest, we have the latest updates. Our BIOS update digest lets you keep track of crucial BIOS updates that improve stability of your AMD Ryzen machine. As per usual, only updated BIOSes from the last digest are listed. Changes are listed after each BIOS, sans beta BIOSes which do not always include change logs. You can find it all below.

In this release, we have several betas graduating to final release, mostly all consisting of AGESA 1.0.0.6 code.

In this issue of the Ryzen BIOS update digest, we have last week's latest updates. Our BIOS update digest lets you keep track of crucial BIOS updates that improve stability of your AMD Ryzen machine. As per usual, only updated BIOSes from the last digest are listed. Changes are listed after each BIOS, sans beta BIOSes which do not always include change logs. You can find it all below.

In this issue of the Ryzen BIOS update digest, we have last week's latest updates. Our BIOS update digest lets you keep track of crucial BIOS updates that improve stability of your AMD Ryzen machine. There have been a lot of updates this week corresponding with manufacturers still catching up with the AGESA 1.0.0.6 update. As per usual, only updated BIOSes from the last digest are listed. Changes are listed after each BIOS, sans beta BIOSes which do not always include change logs. You can find it all below.

In this issue of the Ryzen BIOS update digest, we have last week's latest updates. Our BIOS update digest lets you keep track of crucial BIOS updates that improve stability of your AMD Ryzen machine. Our usual format has undergone some tweaks, but it's for the better. For one, we list beta BIOSes as well now. We also only list BIOSes now that have been updated since the last digest, to avoid redundancy.

ASUS has released BIOS updates for its 200-series motherboards (for the Z270, H270, Q270 and B250 chipsets) that brings full official support and compatibility with Intel's Optane products, such as the recently-released cache SSD.

These first Optane drives use the M.2 form factor, and are designed to be used as ultra-fast caching drives for slower, HDD-class storage - a case of having your cake and eating it too, looking to ally the speed benefits of an SSD with the capacious storage space of traditional plater-based storage. Intel says an Optane-cached 1TB hard disk (at 7,200 rpm) will become twice as responsive when performing daily computing tasks or booting up, and can reduce the time it takes for a game to launch (or level to load) by around the 65% mark. A pure SSD solution will always be faster - and usually more predictable - than the Optane-cached HDD, but Intel's Optane solutions offer a tempting option in terms of a cost-effective speed boost (a 16GB module goes for around $44.)

Overclocking.guide's der8auer has recently posted a story regarding the recently discovered ability to "liberate" AMD's RX 460's shaders - from the Polaris 11 architecture's stock 896 shaders / 56 TMUs to a grand total of 1024 stream processors and 64 TMUs. We did some quick testing and found the mod to be working as promised.

The process is straightforward enough. First, make sure to grab TechPowerUp's own GPU-Z, and save a copy of your original BIOS by clicking the arrow next to the "BIOS Version" field, so you have a fallback in case things go wrong. Then, follow the source link towards overclocking.guide's RX 460 tested BIOSes (currently only for the ASUS STRIX O4G and the Sapphire Nitro 4G), and download the appropriate one. Then run "flash unlocked bios.bat" to flash the BIOS, and in about 15 seconds, the process should be complete, granting you about 10% of extra performance. In our own testing, using the power testing setup we use in graphics cards reviews, we saw a 4 W increase in peak power consumption.

If you are using a modded BIOS on your AMD Polaris card, and try to install AMD's excellent Crimson ReLive drivers, you might be in for a surprise. This is because AMD re-enabled their BIOS signature enforcement with these latest drivers. Basically, if you modded your card's BIOS in search of higher overclocking, more voltage or customized fan settings, the hash in your BIOS is no longer recognized by AMD the driver, since it differs from the factory values.

On detecting such a modded BIOS with an invalid checksum, the Crimson ReLive driver won't load, meaning that the system will run with the VGA fallback driver only, without 3D acceleration and Radeon Settings will not start. However, you can force your modded BIOS to load on Crimson ReLive if you're willing to jump through some hoops.

Just a slight update on our reported stories of overheating issues with EVGA's FTW line of NVIDIA graphics cards, with the company having finished rolling out fan-curve adjusting BIOS updates for the affected cards.

The issue affects EVGA's line of FTW graphics cards ranging through the GTX 1060, GTX 1070, and GTX 1080, sporting the ACX 3.0 solution. As a casual reminder, you can view the list of affected cards below, for which BIOS updates have been issued in a blog post, along with a small FAQ and some instructions on how to perform the update.

As previously reported by TPU, in preparation for Intel's Kaby Lake architecture release, MSI published BIOS updates for its MSI 100 series chipset motherboards that (supposedly) guaranteed compatibility with Intel's upcoming platform. However, the new BIOS update seemingly disappeared from MSI's support webpages without any information as to why. According to ComputerBase, MSI representatives mentioned that an error was found in the code, and that a fix was currently being worked on. According to MSI, the fixed BIOSes should be made available shortly.

In any case, this scenario is better than the alternative of it having been users discovering the BIOS support to be defective. MSI did a good job in finding this ahead of Kaby Lake's launch and potential accompanying headaches from a not fully compatible CPU and motherboard combo.

BIOSTAR is proud to announce that all BIOSTAR RACING Series motherboards are designed with utmost protection in mind with the new BIOSTAR DUAL BIOS feature. There's numerous advantage to having multiple BIOS in a motherboard and BIOSTAR has carefully crafted the DUAL BIOS feature to meet the needs of enthusiasts and power users as well as everyday users.

With two physical BIOS chips, BIOSTAR motherboards allow two independent BIOS ROMs to be booted from. This provides a safety feature as well as a convenient tool for overclockers who might encounter system stability issues during system tweaking as well as troubleshooting possible issues caused by corrupted ROMs or a hardware failure. BIOS viruses that may attack the ROM are also mitigated as one can fall back to the secondary BIOS for system recovery. Users may run different versions of BIOS ROMs independently for maximum compatibility.

In addition to the Hi-Fi B150Z5, BIOSTAR unveiled the micro-ATX Hi-Fi H170Z3. Based on the H170 Express chipset, which has the same feature-set as the Z170, minus CPU overclocking and multi-GPU; the Hi-Fi H170Z3 offers a 7-phase CPU VRM, two each of DDR3 and DDR4 memory slots (you can use any one type at a given time), supporting up to 16 GB of dual-DDR3-1600 and up to 32 GB of dual-DDR4-2133; a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and PCIe 2.0 x1; two legacy PCI slots; and storage options that include SATA-Express, two SATA 6 Gb/s, and M.2 (10 Gb/s). An 8-channel Hi-Fi onboard audio, gigabit Ethernet, and six USB 3.0 ports, make for the rest of its modern connectivity.

A set of leaked BIOS'es surfaced on the web, which apparently enable overclocking of Intel's Pentium Anniversary Edition unlocked dual-core chips, on three of MSI's motherboards based on Intel's H97 Express chipset (which is not supposed to support CPU overclocking). Among these motherboards are the H97M-G43, H97 Guard-Pro, and H97 PC-Mate. All three boards are apparently able to overclock the 3.20 GHz chip all the way up to 4.50 GHz, with a simple crank of the BClk multiplier up to 45.0x. Such a BIOS making it to the web is interesting, because the company released statements in the past, opposing overclocking on H87 and B85 chipset-based motherboards, when the likes of ASRock, ASUS, and Gigabyte released beta BIOSes to support it, before Intel cracked down on them. Given that MSI uses common PCB designs across some 8-series and 9-series chipset motherboards (eg: MS-7850), it will be interesting to see how MSI plugs the leak. For the time being, we've hosted the BIOSes for you, to use at your own risk.