WEBVTT

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What if you just sort of ignored every update for your motherboard's BIOS that was released by the manufacturer?

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Do you really need the latest and greatest version number or to put yourself through the stress of updating it?

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Well, no actually unless you do your computer's basic input and output system or BIOS is

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What your motherboard uses during the start-up procedure to initialize

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Communication between the other components in your system and to test their functionality before handing the keys off to your OS of choice

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After mashing the BIOS setup button during boot typically F2 or delete

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You'll have access to all sorts of powerful tools with control over many aspects of your PC like CPU and memory clock speeds

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Boot device selection and settings and much much more

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But like many other pieces of software your motherboard manufacturer will sometimes have to make changes to the BIOS to improve stability

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Support newer platforms or CPUs and sometimes just fix some bugs

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These are known as BIOS updates if your system is a couple years old chances are there's a BIOS update available and

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Even with new motherboards you can still end up buying stock that's been sitting on a shelf for a while

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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?

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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

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Let's look back at all at these motherboards released in early 2017 which supports CPUs released five

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Generations later in 2022 that means if you built a PC using something like a b350 or x370 chipset

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Not long after release one BIOS update can unlock a whole new tier of CPU performance

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Another performance related reason you might want to consider updating your BIOS is RAM compatibility and stability

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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

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XMP or DOCP which reads the rated RAM speeds of your RAM kit and applies it in the BIOS

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If you don't do this the RAM will typically run at the platform's default speeds known as JDEC

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And you could be missing out on a lot of performance

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Well, some of you may have experienced that applying an XMP or DOCP profile just resulted in stability issues or crashing

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Typically these sorts of stability issues are more prevalent in the early days of a platform and BIOS updates can

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Usually be used to improve stability, especially in the higher clock speed ranges

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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

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Its functionality is identical in that it initializes your components

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But newer versions enable things like higher boost frequencies in your CPU for small performance enhancements

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quicker boot times and stability and bug fixes But did you know the BIOS updates can even help your graphics card perform better?

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Last year both AMD and NVIDIA introduced a new feature called

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Resizable Bar which allows your system's CPU to access all of the video cards memory at the same time

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Whereas systems without resizable bar can only access the GPU in

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265 megabyte chunks back when gaming graphics cards maxed out at only a couple of gigabytes of video memory

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This wasn't much of an issue But with newer cards and the games being able to use an excess of 10 gigabytes

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Having to request data in just quarter Gigabyte chunks at a time can be very inefficient

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To enable this functionality systems require both BIOS updates and video card firmware updates along with toggling resizable bar on in the BIOS menu

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And just like that free performance Finally a word on security early this year HP had to release BIOS updates to over 200 products

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Because not one but two separate vulnerabilities were there that gave attackers the ability to execute code with the highest rights in Windows

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You may also have heard of specter and meltdown exploits along with their many variants

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That affected the majority of modern Intel and AMD processors

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Well, those are patched using the BIOS and CPU microcode updates. Yeah, sounds like another good reason to update

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But I won't lie updating your BIOS isn't always sunshine and rainbows

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If you have a power loss during an update, you're screwed. Your system's gone. She's dead

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You can also mitigate that risk by using a UPS battery backup

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But that still won't help you if your cat steps on the power bar switch

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And if you are a BitLocker user, don't forget to disable BitLocker before an update

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Otherwise you could end up blocking yourself out of your own drive. So

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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

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An update would have been performed exclusively via command line these days

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It's not uncommon to see motherboards with internet update applications in the BIOS menu or even from operating systems

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And also dual boot BIOS chips that you know if one fails and is bricked the other one can just use it

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And some also have USB flashback ports some of which don't even require a CPU to be installed to update the motherboard

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So ultimately if your BIOS and hardware are all copacetic now

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They'll continue to be so for a long time in the future even without an update

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But if you want to upgrade your hardware from one generation to the next or you want the latest in security and performance

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Or you just really have your heart set on a new feature

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You might want to check if a BIOS update is available for your system

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No matter how much may feel like the final frontier for tech enthusiasts

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Also, if your computer is like having a bad time and crashing and stuff update the BIOS

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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