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Do BIOS Upgrades Really Matter?

Posted by Cliff on from the jumping-off-of-the-upgrade-merry-go-round dept.

inkfox asks: "It seems that whenever one buys a motherboard, there's already a BIOS upgrade available by the time you get your hands on it, usually dealing with some degenerate hardware behavior. Given that Linux and Windows 2000/XP replace all BIOS routines once loaded, do these upgrades really matter? If a system is successfully booting, is a BIOS upgrade more a risk than it is preventive maintenance?" This may be true, but what if you are running an OS that depends on the BIOS? If the BIOS is replaced by a specific OS, then BIOS upgrades can't really hurt anything, can they?

5 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. aint broke... by remoford · · Score: 2, Insightful

    if it aint broke dont fix it- first post

  2. It depends... by fok · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What you will get from it.
    In my case, I've got 48bit HD & AthlonXP support

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  3. stupid bugs still happen by Pauly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Am I the only person who had to upgrade bioses to fix y2k issues?
    Oh wait, that's all in the past.
    No one will ever make that kind of mistake again, right?

  4. Adding my $1.02 by gphat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most people are saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I hate to add to the fire, but that's basically the right thing to do.

    My salvation in this otherwise usless post is that I have examples! Being the long-angry-owner of an Abit KT7A, I can tell you first hand that BIOS upgrades can be a real godsend. My KT7A couldn't run for more than 5 minutes without crashing. Linux ran it pretty well, but Windows BSODed constantly. This is in conjunction to the POS VIA 686B southbridge that pukes when you run an Athlon kernel.

    In summary: Yes, BIOS upgrades are useful, but read the ChangeLog and do the upgrade only if you have something you need to fix.

  5. Marketing Hype - 4.0 must be better then 3.0 (duh) by jcasey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Funny, people like to see higher version numbers - it makes them feel better. Why use product x version 3 when version 4 is available? Version 4 must be better right ? It says "new and improved" - and god forbid if a product is released and never patched..(think again). There seems to be a general misconception that a product with a higher version number or newer release date will work better. Read the mfgr's description of what the product fixes. In fact, if possible, read the entire history of fixes. You may be surprised to see new bugs that did'nt exist in previous versions.. A classic example of this is MS's NT 4 service packs, and Dell's Bios update history - The list goes on... As far as the necessity of bios updates goes - check to see what the update fixes - although windows has its own set of low level services, it still relies on some bios services.

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