What if you just sort of ignored every update for your motherboard's BIOS that was released by the manufacturer?
Do you really need the latest and greatest version number or to put yourself through the stress of updating it?
Well, no actually unless you do your computer's basic input and output system or BIOS is
What your motherboard uses during the start-up procedure to initialize
Communication between the other components in your system and to test their functionality before handing the keys off to your OS of choice
After mashing the BIOS setup button during boot typically F2 or delete
You'll have access to all sorts of powerful tools with control over many aspects of your PC like CPU and memory clock speeds
Boot device selection and settings and much much more
But like many other pieces of software your motherboard manufacturer will sometimes have to make changes to the BIOS to improve stability
Support newer platforms or CPUs and sometimes just fix some bugs
These are known as BIOS updates if your system is a couple years old chances are there's a BIOS update available and
Even with new motherboards you can still end up buying stock that's been sitting on a shelf for a while
And yeah, she set a date when you get it So what sort of things might you be missing out on if you just left it the way it came in the box?
Well about those new CPUs That's one of the biggest reasons that people may want to update their BIOS as the sun sets on socket AM4
Let's look back at all at these motherboards released in early 2017 which supports CPUs released five
Generations later in 2022 that means if you built a PC using something like a b350 or x370 chipset
Not long after release one BIOS update can unlock a whole new tier of CPU performance
Another performance related reason you might want to consider updating your BIOS is RAM compatibility and stability
Before you even realize that BIOS updates are a thing You'll likely first end up going into the BIOS because there's one thing people on reddit will not let you forget and that is to enable
XMP or DOCP which reads the rated RAM speeds of your RAM kit and applies it in the BIOS
If you don't do this the RAM will typically run at the platform's default speeds known as JDEC
And you could be missing out on a lot of performance
Well, some of you may have experienced that applying an XMP or DOCP profile just resulted in stability issues or crashing
Typically these sorts of stability issues are more prevalent in the early days of a platform and BIOS updates can
Usually be used to improve stability, especially in the higher clock speed ranges
Although also your CPU's Individual memory controller can make a lot of difference there. It depends AMD motherboards also integrate AGESA into their BIOS
Its functionality is identical in that it initializes your components
But newer versions enable things like higher boost frequencies in your CPU for small performance enhancements
quicker boot times and stability and bug fixes But did you know the BIOS updates can even help your graphics card perform better?
Last year both AMD and NVIDIA introduced a new feature called
Resizable Bar which allows your system's CPU to access all of the video cards memory at the same time
Whereas systems without resizable bar can only access the GPU in
265 megabyte chunks back when gaming graphics cards maxed out at only a couple of gigabytes of video memory
This wasn't much of an issue But with newer cards and the games being able to use an excess of 10 gigabytes
Having to request data in just quarter Gigabyte chunks at a time can be very inefficient
To enable this functionality systems require both BIOS updates and video card firmware updates along with toggling resizable bar on in the BIOS menu
And just like that free performance Finally a word on security early this year HP had to release BIOS updates to over 200 products
Because not one but two separate vulnerabilities were there that gave attackers the ability to execute code with the highest rights in Windows
You may also have heard of specter and meltdown exploits along with their many variants
That affected the majority of modern Intel and AMD processors
Well, those are patched using the BIOS and CPU microcode updates. Yeah, sounds like another good reason to update
But I won't lie updating your BIOS isn't always sunshine and rainbows
If you have a power loss during an update, you're screwed. Your system's gone. She's dead
You can also mitigate that risk by using a UPS battery backup
But that still won't help you if your cat steps on the power bar switch
And if you are a BitLocker user, don't forget to disable BitLocker before an update
Otherwise you could end up blocking yourself out of your own drive. So
Sure, hope you saved that recovery key Motherboard manufacturers are doing what they can to make the experience less of a chore and less of a risk at one point in time
An update would have been performed exclusively via command line these days
It's not uncommon to see motherboards with internet update applications in the BIOS menu or even from operating systems
And also dual boot BIOS chips that you know if one fails and is bricked the other one can just use it
And some also have USB flashback ports some of which don't even require a CPU to be installed to update the motherboard
So ultimately if your BIOS and hardware are all copacetic now
They'll continue to be so for a long time in the future even without an update
But if you want to upgrade your hardware from one generation to the next or you want the latest in security and performance
Or you just really have your heart set on a new feature
You might want to check if a BIOS update is available for your system
No matter how much may feel like the final frontier for tech enthusiasts
Also, if your computer is like having a bad time and crashing and stuff update the BIOS
That's the first thing I always do so huge Thanks for watching hit like check out our other videos comment with video suggestions and just have a great old day. See you later