MSI Releases UEFI Update for its X670 and B650 Motherboards That Cuts Boot Times in Half

[TheLostSwede]

It seems like the long boot times that have plagued MSI's X670 and B650 motherboards might soon be nothing but a bad memory, as the company has issued UEFI updates for its motherboards that are said to cut the boot times in half. The company has added what it calls "Memory Context Restore" in the new UEFI releases, which speeds up the boot times significantly. MSI didn't provide any details as to what the feature does, but according to a post on MSI's forum, it is meant to avoid retraining of the RAM and is a feature that MSI had offered on past AMD platforms.

The chart below shows the boot times using two 16 GB DDR5-6000 modules from Kingston with EXPO and with Memory Context Restore enabled, the boot time goes from 43 to 22 seconds. The specific test system was using MSI's own MAG X670E Tomahawk WiFi motherboard, paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU.If you have an MSI X670 or B650 motherboard and want to take advantage of the new improved boot times, head over to MSI's website and downloaded the latest UEFI version for your motherboard.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[TumbleGeorge]

This must be good. But when upgrading something like RAM or graphic card, wich has VRAM onboard. Will require new training process?

 

[Daven]

My B650E Asrock steel legend boots in less than 20 seconds. Another memory compatibility BIOS update is in beta. I think the boot time issue is disappearing across the main motherboard vendors.

 

[TheLostSwede]

This must be good. But when upgrading something like RAM or graphic card, wich has VRAM onboard. Will require new training process?

This is only related to the system RAM.

 

[PrEzi]

TPU --- Please stop spreading marketing FUD!!! First of all --- Memory context restore was present since AT LEAST 3-4 UEFI releases now.
There are literally tens of posts on MSI forums talking about problems with Memory Context Restore and reliability --- enabling it sometimes destabilizes systems and causes BSODs. Especially in the combination with EXPO.
Users have asked FOR MONTHS now to improve this function because currently - most prefer to leave it disabled.

It is enough to take a look here :

MSI Global English Forum

...

forum-en.msi.com

 

[rv8000]

TPU --- Please stop spreading marketing FUD!!! First of all --- Memory context restore was present since AT LEAST 3-4 UEFI releases now.
There are literally tens of posts on MSI forums talking about problems with Memory Context Restore and reliability --- enabling it sometimes destabilizes systems and causes BSODs. Especially in the combination with EXPO.
Users have asked FOR MONTHS now to improve this function because currently - most prefer to leave it disabled.

It is enough to take a look here :

MSI Global English Forum

...

forum-en.msi.com

Accurate information isn’t important though, we need clicks and ad revenue

/s

 

[W1zzard]

TPU --- Please stop spreading marketing FUD!!! First of all --- Memory context restore was present since AT LEAST 3-4 UEFI releases now.
There are literally tens of posts on MSI forums talking about problems with Memory Context Restore and reliability --- enabling it sometimes destabilizes systems and causes BSODs. Especially in the combination with EXPO.
Users have asked FOR MONTHS now to improve this function because currently - most prefer to leave it disabled.

It is enough to take a look here :

MSI Global English Forum

...

forum-en.msi.com

Maybe they've fixed it? I remember using MCR around Dec and it worked fine to cut the boot time on my ASUS Hero. Then the BIOS updates for non-X CPUs came and I got random bluescreens. I'd assume these to be fixable since it worked before

 

[wNotyarD]

Maybe they've fixed it? I remember using MCR around Dec and it worked fine to cut the boot time on my ASUS Hero. Then the BIOS updates for non-X CPUs came and I got random bluescreens. I'd assume these to be fixable since it worked before

Could've been an issue with MSI specifically.

 

[AusWolf]

The "Memory Context Restore" option has been part of my board's BIOS since the very first version, but if I enable it, my PC will not boot at all. This smells fishy.

Edit: Also, what's with the 43 sec and 22 sec? I'm also running 2x 16 GB 6000 MHz RAM, but my boot time (until the logo appears) is 28 sec with MCR disabled and infinite with it enabled.

Edit 2: I'm on a relatively old BIOS, by the way.

 

[bl4C3y3]

The "Memory Context Restore" option has been part of my board's BIOS since the very first version, but if I enable it, my PC will not boot at all. This smells fishy.

Edit: Also, what's with the 43 sec and 22 sec? I'm also running 2x 16 GB 6000 MHz RAM, but my boot time (until the logo appears) is 28 sec with MCR disabled and infinite with it enabled.

Edit 2: I'm on a relatively old BIOS, by the way.

"infinite with it enabled" ... haha, that sounds like a powerful feature in a marketting slide !

Similar situation here:
I'm on B650 Tomahawk (with 2x 16GB @6000 EXPO), currently bios 1.51 (from March 22) and have about 30sec boot time (till logo) ... didn't really see any difference in boot times for the different bios I've tried (with MCR disabled, mind you).
I haven't dared to turn MCR on again since some months ago when I first tried it, because while boot time was reduced to 10 seconds, I got bluescreens during Windows loading screen or after a couple of seconds in Windows ...
There are not many scary things about computers, but seeing recurring bluescreens during start-up is one of them

When checking the MSI download page, I don't see any info highlighting this memory context restore feature (being fixed) ?
Or is that why this is posted on TPU, to inform us, I don't mind that

Lastest UEFI version, that would be v161(beta) for my board, from 14 April ... that seems to be the same date as the build data in the screenshot, so might be that this is the one.
Maybe they optimized it so that it is faster, but still does some checking/training, and not cut time to 1/3, but more to 1/2 or something ...

Would be great if TPU could test this if they still have an MSI B650/X670 board laying around ?

 

[ir_cow]

I am missing something? These boot times are the same. If you enable Context Restore it drops to 15-25 seconds. Same as before this "update"

 

[sLowEnd]

I'm not inclined to believe the issues with memory context restore are sorted out.

 

[Minus Infinity]

So glad I didn't rush into AM5 and Zen 4. I'm waiting for Zen 5 and will skip this gen entirely including RDNA3. I hope Zen5 gets all its ducks in a row but will be eagerrly waiting for Arrow Lake too.

 

[lsevald]

I have tested Memory Context Restore (MCR) on and off over several BIOS releases for my Strix 650e-e, and I get RAM instability randomly (fine for a few boots then problems). Curiously I'm sometimes getting errors in Memtest86+ test#10, which is a test for bit rot I believe, this is an error I have only seen with MCR enabled (I have been tweaking and testing my RAM a lot). Lately it has been recommended to also enable PowerDown in tandem with MCR, and later Asus BIOS'es also flips this on automatically when MCR is enabled. One issue with PowerDown is that it also increases Latency (Aida) a little. So personally, I'm sticking with long boot times for a while longer...but this might be an Asus/board isolated issue

 

[bl4C3y3]

So, in the name of science, I've gathered up some courage and installed the latest bios as instructed in this news post:
7D75v161(Beta version) for B650 Tomahawk

Enabled MCR (and EXPO @6000, but no other performance tweaks) and typing this message now after a restart ... so far so good.
I would say POST time is about halved, feels like going from 30 to 15 sec (I didn't really bother timing it yet ... so there goes science).

On the other hand, for some reason, this relatively long boot time doesn't bother me ... under normal use (and I would also take stability over quick boot).
When doing some testing with different settings for wich you need to reboot, then needing to reboot multiple times is ... 'uneventful'.

EDIT:
ok, I've taken the stopwatch out:
MCR disabled: 42sec to Windows logo (25sec of orange LED during POST, indicating memory checking/training)
MCR enabled: 20sec to Windows logo (3sec of orange LED during POST, indicating memory checking/training)

 

[BatRastard]

It's still too long. With my B550 A-Pro, I was able to whittle my boot time to just 14 seconds by disabling "Legacy USB Support" since I have a 3TB USB spinner that does NOT need to eat 5 seconds spinning up just for UEFI to say, "Oh, you're a non-bootable GPT drive!" People with internal SATA spinners can stop the spin up by enabling "Hot Swap" on the SATA port.

But disabling "Legacy USB Support" pisses me off since it disables ALL booting from USB. Most of my flash drives are GPT. If they have an EFI bootloader, they shoot boot under UEFI compliance because UEFI isn't Legacy -- CSM IS! And so is MBR. Disabling "Legacy USB Support" should stop MBR based USB drives from booting but leave UEFI/GPT alone or have an option in the UEFI HDD Boot Priority BBS where you can flag non-bootable drives.

Still, 14 second boot on the B550 ...

My 4670k boots OpenSuse with KDE Plasma on a SATA SSD in 8 seconds - 3 of which is spent on Grub ...

 

[bl4C3y3]

Everything went well with 7D75v161 (16 beta 1 version) on B650 Tomahawk since I installed it about 8 weeks ago ...
Yesterday, I installed the 7D75v16 (16 final version) and again set "context restore" to enabled, seemed OK.
Now today after a cold boot, within a minute or so, I got a scrambled blue screen ... yeah, back to "context restore" auto/off for now
Might have been something else, but then I will know soon enough

 

[AusWolf]

Everything went well with 7D75v161 (16 beta 1 version) on B650 Tomahawk since I installed it about 8 weeks ago ...
Yesterday, I installed the 7D75v16 (16 final version) and again set "context restore" to enabled, seemed OK.
Now today after a cold boot, within a minute or so, I got a scrambled blue screen ... yeah, back to "context restore" auto/off for now
Might have been something else, but then I will know soon enough

Memory Context Restore worked with some BIOS versions on my board, but it doesn't work with the latest one. Not that it matters, boot time is just as quick for some strange reason.

 

[bl4C3y3]

Memory Context Restore worked with some BIOS versions on my board, but it doesn't work with the latest one. Not that it matters, boot time is just as quick for some strange reason.

no such luck for me it seems ... just timed mine without MCR enabled, and boot time to windows logo is back to about 40 sec
let's see if a v17beta will make it faster again