BIOS adjustments

[weandi]

Im not new to gaming, been around almost as long as the internet itself. post 1979.

 

anyhow I want to do core stepping but my bios which is Pheonix award 5.1 which is owned by AsusTek will not allow me to update to the 6.1, anyone have a decent link for forceware BIOS?

 

Im not too worried about bricking my motherboard, as i have many at my disposal. just none that are better than my current.

 

My pc is about 10 years old, and keep up with current PC's

 

AMD athlon x2 64 2.8 4600 462 socket

 

AsusTek Narra2 mobo

 

Intek 750w PSU

 

4gb Kingston Hyper X non-eec 

 

geforce gt620 overclocked from 800 to 1200, 4gb gpu

 

no water cooling, just proper placement of 120mm fans.

 

And my OS is Win7-64.

[prideslayer]

Forceware is a driver thing, not a bios thing.

 

It's quite possible the new BIOS has stuff in it that the motherboard doesn't support, and so won't let you update.

 

FYI, before you get started, most BIOS (even 10 year old ones) have what's called an "immutable boot block". If you're prepared, they're impossible to "brick" simply by flashing the bios, no matter what garbage gets put in there. On a BIOS failure at boot, it will fall back to trying to boot off a floppy (some will do USB and/or CD as well) so, if you have a boot disk ready to go that flashes automatically back to a known good BIOS, you can't hurt anything.

 

If it goes wrong, pop in the boot disk and wait until it reboots itself, repaired.

[weandi]

flashing is what i meant, i just wasnt sure of the term. 

 

and thanks, thats exactly what i needed to know. Ive read up on flashing the BIOS, but ive been unsure the exact process. the 6.1 offers core stepping, whereas my current bios does not. but my processor does support it.

[prideslayer]

Just make sure your boot floppy (or whatever) is ready and works automatically. If the bios is so messed up that it goes into that backup bootblock, you will not have keyboard, mouse, or even any video. You'll only know it's done when it automatically reboots.

 

So test it first. Use your current bios, boot off the device, and make sure it correctly flashes and reboots. That way you'll know it works when you can't see the progress or interact with it.

[weandi]

ill test this out on another computer before i test it on my main pc, ive got tons of computers that were built around the same year that have the same bios. thanks for the help.