How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

[nate42nd]

Say you are overclocking and it fails. The machine boots up with the settings you had so you can fix them. I have seen this but never had it happen. What should you do if this happens, or if you get a BSOD?

Do you need to re-flash the BIOS? Will the back-up BIOS still be there?
How does it work if anyone knows? I can't figure out how it would use the back-up and still have the back-up BIOS working after it saves you.

I know the website says there is no way to flash the back-up BIOS yourself so, does it revert back to the original?

Thanks

[Acebmxer]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

From my understanding your cant make any changes to the back up bios like its read only. If a over clock fails where it kicks in the back up bios it reflashes the main bios to default settings reboots then it will post allowing you to renter the bios and let you make what ever changes you need and try again.

I have yet to see my board kick in the back up bios yet. I have had it go into a boot loop of about 3-5 loops and I have just hit the PSU power switch on the back. Or it just fails to post shut down fail to post shut down then boot but still be from main bios but with defualt settings and then the BIG RED error box once you go into M.I.T.

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I hate to admit this but about 8 months ago I tried starting a P45-UD3P with NO RAM installed. It (of course) would not start and I realized very soon what I had done. I saw the "red box" next time I went to the MIT.

I have seen someone put 500 FSB in the same board with no voltage change and it started. I assume from the backup BIOS. It still had his settings there. (500 FSB) so he could change it.

I just wonder how the dual BIOS is set up. If you flash a BIOS and the power goes out....will it revert to the backup?

I sure wish they had it set up so you could control what was on the backup chip. I can see why they don't do it. There are a lot of idiots out there. (like guys who use no RAM in their machines) but really...it would be nice to control.

[Acebmxer]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I have had my board and cpu up to 500 fsb. It wont even think about booting at default voltages at those speeds.

I dont know on other gigabyte boards but on the ep45-ud3p my board came with bios F6 on the main and back up. From what I know if you update to F9 you are still stuck with F6 on the back up. Untill F10e came along and Gigabyte update Q-flash so it had to update the back up bios to be compatible. But your main bios is stuck at F10e you can go up to F10f but to go back before F10e its not for the weak hearted.

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

Untill F10e came along and Gigabyte update Q-flash so it had to update the back up bios to be compatible. But your main bios is stuck at F10e you can go up to F10f but to go back before F10e its not for the weak hearted.

How did you go about updating your backup BIOS. I understand this is not possible. Is there a way to do it? Gigabyte says it can't be done manually, however this makes no sense since you may use a CPU that was not compatible with the shipping BIOS. Either you can do it manually or the flash utility does it behind the scene. Is this what you are describing? Q-Flash does it for you?

[artdrivers]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I just wonder how the dual BIOS is set up. If you flash a BIOS and the power goes out....will it revert to the backup?

What happens is if for some reason the (M) bios gets corupted you see a message "BIOS CHECKSUM ERROR...RECOVERING then the (B) bios will flash the (M) bios and you will be back up and running. Although sometimes the (M) bios will partly flash and get into a loop. Then you will need to PM Lsdmeasap to get a diagram and instructions to jump a certain bios connection (either 4 and 7 or 5 and 6 depending) on the (M) bios. Then power up to force a checksum error. Then B bios will flash (M) bios. Either way it beats a brick.

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

What happens is if for some reason the (M) bios gets corupted you see a message "BIOS CHECKSUM ERROR...RECOVERING then the (B) bios will flash the (M) bios and you will be back up and running. Although sometimes the (M) bios will partly flash and get into a loop. Then you will need to PM Lsdmeasap to get a diagram and instructions to jump a certain bios connection (either 4 and 7 or 5 and 6 depending) on the (M) bios. Then power up to force a checksum error. Then B bios will flash (M) bios. Either way it beats a brick.

Very good, thanks for the info. Dual BIOS is one of the other reasons I keep going with Gigabyte. I almost CAN'T go with another company now. Gigabyte is like crack. haha Honestly, thanks for the info....I hope I never have to use it.

I can't believe every company does not have dual bios, and something like q-flash. I understand another large mobo company still makes you download a flash utility. Unbelievable. I suppose if you were used to that, it would be easy too. Gigabyte just seems to have the motherboard business figured out. They ARE NOT perfect by any means. I have issues with my new P55-UD4P but most are fixed and I can flash the new BIOS so easy.

[Acebmxer]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

How did you go about updating your backup BIOS. I understand this is not possible. Is there a way to do it? Gigabyte says it can't be done manually, however this makes no sense since you may use a CPU that was not compatible with the shipping BIOS. Either you can do it manually or the flash utility does it behind the scene. Is this what you are describing? Q-Flash does it for you?

Normally you cant update the back up bios. except for when they update q-flash or at least thats the reason it was said to have happened for F10e bios for ep45-ud3p. To update the back up bios it is said that you press ALT+F12 at post and will give you the option to update bios. I dont know if this is for every gigabyte board with every bios revision. But when updating to F10e it automatically did this with out user input.

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

Normally you cant update the back up bios. except for when they update q-flash or at least thats the reason it was said to have happened for F10e bios for ep45-ud3p. To update the back up bios it is said that you press ALT+F12 at post and will give you the option to update bios. I dont know if this is for every gigabyte board with every bios revision. But when updating to F10e it automatically did this with out user input.

Oh, alt+f12 oaky. I will not do it but I have been wondering about my new board. It says you can use f11 to save current BIOS settings to a profile (8 profiles total) that seems nice and I will be using that. Then you use f12 to load a saved profile. Has anyone tried this? Does it work okay? Is this why the new P55 boards are 2MB instead of 1MB. That's what I'm thinking. I have not ever seen this done and wonder if it works okay.

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I see....I wonder if they have made a change on the new boards. It says from the main menu you can press f11 to save current settings to a profile. I don't think this was on my last board (P45-UD3P) i might be wrong. I can't wait to try it out.

Edit: It IS on my last board. I just never noticed it. cool!

Thanks for all the info. I really need it.

[wazza300]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I see....I wonder if they have made a change on the new boards. It says from the main menu you can press f11 to save current settings to a profile. I don't think this was on my last board (P45-UD3P) i might be wrong. I can't wait to try it out.

Thanks for all the info. I really need it.

i think you can save current bios to the hard drive too

[artdrivers]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

Yes the F11 and F12 save bios profile works. You can save it to floppy or harddrive, or USB drive as well, and send it to others with the same setup to try. This is done through the QFLASH utility. You can also enter QFLASH without entering the bios by pressing the END key. Although it is recommended to Load Optimized defaults save and restart, but if you loaded optimized defauts you need to adjust the voltage for your memory save and restart again. (then you can press END on restart) before you use the QFLASH and update your Bios. I hope this makes sense. It's quite a run on words. Here save and use this----> http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios...h-guide-27576/

[nate42nd]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I have not had a floppy in the last 2 computers I've built or the last 2 I purchased and I use an SSD. I was hoping it would save the profiles to the chip itself. The new P55 boards have a 2MB BIOS instead of 1MB. I wonder why the extra room there.....I am always formatting my HD and reinstalling Windows 7 or Ubuntu or something. If a floppy or HD are the options, I guess I could save them to a mechanical HD.....can you choose where you save it? I guess I can just try it.

[profJim]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I've saved and loaded bios profiles on 3 GB motherboards (P35-DS3L, N650SLI-DS4, and EP45-UD3P), as well as saving the bios setup to my hard drive. About the only thing I haven't done is to save my current settings and reload them from a usb drive. Q-Flash has no problem updating the bios from a FAT32 partition.

On a couple of occasions while booting (after changing my bios settings), the screen briefly displayed a brief message that said something like "Searching for bios on your drive". Scary? You betcha!!! It looks like the bios failed to access the bios from the backup bios chip. The motherboard manual states that the saved bios on your drive must be in a FAT32 (maybe FAT16i is OK?) partition for the bios to be accessed. I always put my saved bios profiles in the root folder.

Less than a month after I bought my N650SLI-DS4, I got the dreaded "searching for bios" message while booting. I had just performed a minor bios tweak with tighter memory timings. I didn't have a saved bios profile on my drive and I ended up with a bricked motherboard.

Several weeks ago my N650 displayed the "searching for bios" message. Even though I had several versions of saved bios files on my hard drive, I had a floppy disk with my most recent saved settings (not fully inserted) in my floppy drive, so I quickly installed the floppy and saw that the bios was self-flashing from the floppy. Whew!!

The P35-DS3L has "dual virtual bios", whatever that means.
The N650 allows me to boot from the MAIN or BACKUP bios chips. With this option, I can save up to 16 different bios profiles and choose which of the bios chips will be the default bios boot chip.
I was really disappointed when my EP45 wouldn't let me choose which bios chip to boot from.

Just to be on the safe side, I always have at least 2 saved bios files on my hard drive:
xxxxxxxx.Fn where xxxxxxxx is a copy of the original bios file name and Fn is the original bios version.
XXXXMMDD.Fn where XXXX is the mobo model name, MM = month, DD = day, and Fn = bios version.

note: Q-flash will let you save your bios without a file extension. This probably isn't a good feature!

P55 bios chip: Post the # on the bios chip for your P55. On my EP45, this # is MX25L8005, and has 2 of these 1Mbit chips.

[artdrivers]

Re: How does Gigabyte dual BIOS work?

I was hoping it would save the profiles to the chip itself.

F11 does save CMOS to BIOS up to 8 profiles. You can also copy them to HDD. floppy, or USB flash drive. It is an extra option. You can save as many as you want this way.