ASUS released 'evaluation copy' of BIOS - Messed with my system.

[sethmatrix7]

Now wait. You just reinforced what I said - and contradicted yourself at the same time.

If something is over-voltage, the user broke it by dinking with something he shouldn't have - something was broke. And I said repeatedly that updates often are released for new CPUs.

There are always exceptions to the rule. And you, once again, pull out extreme exceptions in your attempt to justify trying make moot an entire rule.

The rule stands. If it ain't broke, don't f&^% with it!

>If something is over-voltage, the user broke it by dinking with something he shouldn't have - something was broke.
That is not always the case. Asus (along with many others) B650 and X670 motherboards default voltage values were beyond the recommended limit for X3D chips, and the BIOS Asus released to update to the latest AGESA and fix the issue was still not below the recommended limit per Gamers Nexus-

 

[Assimilator]

Unless you need the X399 chipset's vast amount of PCIe lanes

Welcome to 2023, where more than 16 lanes available via the PCIe slots is considered a "vast amount". I don't know why the manufacturers can't implement PCIe switches to give you 24 lanes (16 + 8) via the PCIe slots, and every M.2 you plug in removes 4 of those lanes. So if you have only a single drive plugged in you get x16/x4; if you have 2 drives plugged in you get x16/x0 (or x8/x8 if the 2nd slot is populated); 3 drives ends up with x8/x4; and 4 drives x8/x0.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Welcome to 2023, where more than 16 lanes available via the PCIe slots is considered a "vast amount". I don't know why the manufacturers can't implement PCIe switches to give you 24 lanes (16 + 8) via the PCIe slots, and every M.2 you plug in removes 4 of those lanes. So if you have only a single drive plugged in you get x16/x4; if you have 2 drives plugged in you get x16/x0 (or x8/x8 if the 2nd slot is populated); 3 drives ends up with x8/x4; and 4 drives x8/x0.

Some super high end/creator-focused motherboards have that, but it's already considered a "premium" feature

 

[bug]

I don’t know what board you have but ASUS should’ve mentioned in the bios notes that it’s an evaluation copy. If they didn’t, then that is bad, and is reason to be upset, but still, it’s on you to maintain a proper development environment that is portable. For all I know you are using VMs, but then I doubt this would be such a problem.

Asus did even better and didn't even add release notes anywhere. You just go to the BIOS download page (where nothing is marked as beta or otherwise not for general consumption) and get one line saying this BIOS provides new Agesa.

Now according to the link I posted above, the same issue on Gigabyte boards proved to be just an oversight. Someone simply left that text in there. Which could be the case here as well and OP's problems may lie elsewhere.

 

[R-T-B]

GIGABYTE did this back in the x370 era. Several releases actually. The culprit is using a trial version of the AMIBIOS software to build the bios. I shit you not. Pretty lazy mistake, but should be harmless otherwise. I mean they do actually hold the license they need (obviously) so no laws are really being broken.

 

[pavle]

Nothing can display before the BIOS POST screen.

Graphics cards used to display their little message before post screen, but that was long ago (e.g. 3dfx Voodoo3, etc.).
Goes to show you in what state the whole industry is - everything is rushed to the market and then fixed up as they go, more often than not. Just give the new thech some time to simmer down so to speak.

 

[1stFalloutboy]

And you don't read between the lines
I said whoever pays attention to technical data doesn't look at animated pictures during boot.

Much of the fuss in this thread is about you not knowing you were running an evaluation BIOS. But you took no actions verify that. Sure, it would be preferrable if BIOSes were marked in a "in your face" manner, but let's not pretend the blame lies squarely elsewhere.

Fwiw, as an owner of an Asus motherboard, I can attest I have rarely seen such a big pile of crap as I have seen in their software.

It was not possible to know it was and EVALUATION COPY unless you disabled the boot animation logo as I said, as soon as I did this to investigate what I called the cursor dance was when the message came up. The cursor dance basically was you would see the cursor appear on the screen drop down a line, delay, drop down a line, delay, move a couple of characters to the right, jump to the top off the screen, delay, move a couple of characters to the right and then disappear. It was like something was being printed in black ink on a black background then the screen was cleared it printed something else and then carried on with initialization, the one time that I managed to capture what was being printed and I have a photo of that to it showed a message about a library failure.

GIGABYTE did this back in the x370 era. Several releases actually. The culprit is using a trial version of the AMIBIOS software to build the bios. I shit you not. Pretty lazy mistake, but should be harmless otherwise. I mean they do actually hold the license they need (obviously) so no laws are really being broken.

Well in this case it seemed to break the drivers for UEFI screen initialization when booting and caused odd behaviour when using boot over ride in BIOS.

This is not the first time I have come across an evaluation copy of a BIOS which has had nobbling effects as I said previously I had an evaluation copy laptop bios which disabled one core and two threads on an 4 core 8 thread CPU.

 

[tabascosauz]

It was not possible to know it was and EVALUATION COPY unless you disabled the boot animation logo as I said, as soon as I did this to investigate what I called the cursor dance was when the message came up. The cursor dance basically was you would see the cursor appear on the screen drop down a line, delay, drop down a line, delay, move a couple of characters to the right, jump to the top off the screen, delay, move a couple of characters to the right and then disappear. It was like something was being printed in black ink on a black background then the screen was cleared it printed something else and then carried on with initialization, the one time that I managed to capture what was being printed and I have a photo of that to it showed a message about a library failure.

I'm sorry you had a negative experience with said BIOS, but you're placing a bit more emphasis on the EVALUATION COPY text than it really deserves. AGESA has been 5+ years of buggy BIOS releases, because AMD AGESA =! vendor implementation. It just looks like you haven't done enough BIOS flashing before now (as it should be, don't go flashing every release) to have this experience before today.

There isn't much distinction between beta and release. Gigabyte is just the most transparent (or blatant, if you prefer) vendor in this area. Vendors put out betas to test the waters, sometimes surreptitiously pull the BIOSes with no explanation, replace the BIOSes without giving notice, replace working betas with broken releases, and sometimes literally rename the beta to release without changing anything. There's no accountability, they do what they want.

No guarantees they'll do anything as imo Gigabyte and especially ASRock are more responsive to this type of feedback, but you should really be letting Asus know directly about this specific BIOS.

As to TPM, it's really easy to create your install ISO through Rufus - it has a checkbox to remove the TPM requirement. WIthout TPM, all you're missing are the performance-sapping security features in 11 (HVCI, memory integrity) and bitlocker I think, so unless you value that stuff then you're not missing out on much. I've never had TPM enabled on my 11 install since the first few early release and pre-release builds.

 

[1stFalloutboy]

Welcome to 2023, where more than 16 lanes available via the PCIe slots is considered a "vast amount". I don't know why the manufacturers can't implement PCIe switches to give you 24 lanes (16 + 8) via the PCIe slots, and every M.2 you plug in removes 4 of those lanes. So if you have only a single drive plugged in you get x16/x4; if you have 2 drives plugged in you get x16/x0 (or x8/x8 if the 2nd slot is populated); 3 drives ends up with x8/x4; and 4 drives x8/x0.

Funny you should say that, one of my two machines I think does have a down stream switch with two drives one side of it and two attached direct to the CPU, the two drives on the other side of the switch operate in x4 each if they are used but reduce the GPU to x8 with GPUs being PCIe 4 devices and being that they are on PCIe 5 slots I don't believe bifurcating in this manor causes any slowdown for the GPU anyway - but I might be wrong about that.

I'm sorry you had a negative experience with said BIOS, but you're placing a bit more emphasis on the EVALUATION COPY text than it really deserves. AGESA has been 5+ years of buggy BIOS releases, because AMD AGESA =! vendor implementation. It just looks like you haven't done enough BIOS flashing before now (as it should be, don't go flashing every release) to have this experience before today.

There isn't much distinction between beta and release. Gigabyte is just the most transparent (or blatant, if you prefer) vendor in this area. Vendors put out betas to test the waters, sometimes surreptitiously pull the BIOSes with no explanation, replace the BIOSes without giving notice, replace working betas with broken releases, and sometimes literally rename the beta to release without changing anything. There's no accountability, they do what they want.

No guarantees they'll do anything as imo Gigabyte and especially ASRock are more responsive to this type of feedback, but you should really be letting Asus know directly about this specific BIOS.

As to TPM, it's really easy to create your install ISO through Rufus - it has a checkbox to remove the TPM requirement. WIthout TPM, all you're missing are the performance-sapping security features in 11 (HVCI, memory integrity) and bitlocker I think, so unless you value that stuff then you're not missing out on much. I've never had TPM enabled on my 11 install since the first few early release and pre-release builds.

As for creating the TPM iso install through rufus I can't be sure if that this still works I think Microsoft make have bjorked it for them when they stopped them from being able to download Windows ISOs from Microsofts site but I have done no testing in that area.

As for what is going on with ASUS I think I may have hit a nerve, I downloaded the 2501 BIOS again this morning after finding an option in BIOS which allows me to switch between each of the two BIOS versions on board without using the switch on the rear IO area. This was a welcome surprise and allowed for some further testing.
With a freshly downloaded 2501 BIOS and 2401 on board I switched to the second BIOS which was showed as version 2001 and flashed it to 2501 I then verified by switching between the two BIOSes that I had 2401 and 2501 on board. I then attempted my previous operations with the 2501 I just installed after again doing the usual CMOS reset involved when doing BIOS updates.

Something has changed. The BIOS now acts normally and nothing like the way it was when it was failing to operate correctly.

I can now boot over ride without the BIOS having to save something and do a full reboot.
No longer suffer from cursor dance.
No longer have the EVALUATION COPY message.
No longer suffer system failure when booting to USB Recovery or Windows Installation media and having the display initialize.

In short it seems that my complaining has caused the BIOS to be surreptitiously updated without updating either the file version or release date..

Looks like someone is trying to cover their butt. I wish I still had the original 2501 I downloaded so I could do an FC /B and see what the differences are.

I forgot to mention too that instead of having to pull video cables from my KVM and run a cable direct from the GPU to the Display that the display now works through the KVM again.

 

[eidairaman1]

Sounds like the problem is fixed, that's all that matters at this rate

 

[tabascosauz]

As for creating the TPM iso install through rufus I can't be sure if that this still works I think Microsoft make have bjorked it for them when they stopped them from being able to download Windows ISOs from Microsofts site but I have done no testing in that area.

The Rufus modifications have always worked for me. I just made a fresh 22H2 install USB like a week or two ago and used it on three different laptops.

There's an extra option on MS' download page now, to just be able to download the ISO itself without the crappy installation assistant. Unfortunately if you are looking to directly upgrade not clean install, I don't think the Rufus method works (as idk if running setup.exe from the root still has TPM check) - but I would not recommend upgrading an old and cluttered 10 install anyway for obvious reasons. At least, not without doing the upgrade first to ensure your product key registered, then clean installing/resetting afterwards.

As for what is going on with ASUS I think I may have hit a nerve, I downloaded the 2501 BIOS again this morning after finding an option in BIOS which allows me to switch between each of the two BIOS versions on board without using the switch on the rear IO area. This was a welcome surprise and allowed for some further testing.
With a freshly downloaded 2501 BIOS and 2401 on board I switched to the second BIOS which was showed as version 2001 and flashed it to 2501 I then verified by switching between the two BIOSes that I had 2401 and 2501 on board. I then attempted my previous operations with the 2501 I just installed after again doing the usual CMOS reset involved when doing BIOS updates.

Something has changed. The BIOS now acts normally and nothing like the way it was when it was failing to operate correctly

I'm not too surprised, wouldn't be the first time a board vendor stealthily pulled a BIOS and replaced it without acknowledging it in the update notes. Good to hear that this BIOS seems to be working correctly.

Sometimes flashes also don't go too well and can corrupt. A reflash (or switch to different version then reflash) can work wonders.

In any case, don't put much (if any) faith in board vendors making good BIOS updates or being transparent in their update notes. Especially for old platforms on which there are no more performance improvements or active fixes to be had (AM4 and TR)

 

[1stFalloutboy]

The Rufus modifications have always worked for me. I just made a fresh 22H2 install USB like a week or two ago and used it on three different laptops.

There's an extra option on MS' download page now, to just be able to download the ISO itself without the crappy installation assistant. Unfortunately if you are looking to directly upgrade not clean install, I don't think the Rufus method works (as idk if running setup.exe from the root still has TPM check) - but I would not recommend upgrading an old and cluttered 10 install anyway for obvious reasons. At least, not without doing the upgrade first to ensure your product key registered, then clean installing/resetting afterwards.



I'm not too surprised, wouldn't be the first time a board vendor stealthily pulled a BIOS and replaced it without acknowledging it in the update notes. Good to hear that this BIOS seems to be working correctly.

Sometimes flashes also don't go too well and can corrupt. A reflash (or switch to different version then reflash) can work wonders.

In any case, don't put much (if any) faith in board vendors making good BIOS updates or being transparent in their update notes. Especially for old platforms on which there are no more performance improvements or active fixes to be had (AM4 and TR)

I can't be positive but if I remember rightly the BIOS flash for this machine and I mean sheesh I just did it this morning you think I'd remember -must be my grey showing, that the BIOS gets burnt in for 50% of the flash and then gets read and compared against the original for 50% of the flash.

 

[Hardcore Games]

Not sure about the recent BIOS flap as my Dell Precision 5540 had a recent BIOS update and machine is as stable as before. Last hardware change was installing an Intel AX210 to replace the old AC 9260 which is an antique by today's best hardware.

 

[claes]

As for what is going on with ASUS I think I may have hit a nerve, I downloaded the 2501 BIOS again this morning after finding an option in BIOS which allows me to switch between each of the two BIOS versions on board without using the switch on the rear IO area. This was a welcome surprise and allowed for some further testing.
With a freshly downloaded 2501 BIOS and 2401 on board I switched to the second BIOS which was showed as version 2001 and flashed it to 2501 I then verified by switching between the two BIOSes that I had 2401 and 2501 on board. I then attempted my previous operations with the 2501 I just installed after again doing the usual CMOS reset involved when doing BIOS updates.

/thread

honestly sounds like a you problem. You didn’t know your board had a dual bios option and didn’t set up an even decent dev environment to account for hardware updates?

 

[eidairaman1]

Not sure about the recent BIOS flap as my Dell Precision 5540 had a recent BIOS update and machine is as stable as before. Last hardware change was installing an Intel AX210 to replace the old AC 9260 which is an antique by today's best hardware.

Ymmv, sometimes a reset is required

 

[1stFalloutboy]

/thread

honestly sounds like a you problem. You didn’t know your board had a dual bios option and didn’t set up an even decent dev environment to account for hardware updates?

If you read back instead of only looking at the latest post you will find that I do know about my board having dual BIOS, there was an option in the motherboards BIOS to do it which I didn't know about, there is a button on the back of the PC which would have achieved the same thing the problem was it requires you to see one of two LEDS to determine when the BIOS had made the switch, both of which were obscured by the CPU Heatsink and my Video card - which you

would have known if you had read the thread from the beginning. And what has the dev environment got to do with hardware updates? that statement does not even make sense.

Maybe read the entire thread before commenting next time - you may find you actually understand what is going on then.

Not sure about the recent BIOS flap as my Dell Precision 5540 had a recent BIOS update and machine is as stable as before. Last hardware change was installing an Intel AX210 to replace the old AC 9260 which is an antique by today's best hardware.

BIOS's are not identical among machines esp between laptops and desktops, even between models they are vastly different. As for the AC9260 it's still a very capable WiFi Adapter and depending on your use case WiFI is not necessarily the best option anyway. If for example you are transferring files via some form of torrent client you don't want to be using WiFi, the same applies for playing games. General use such as E-Mails or casting video sure.
One of my Laptops runs an AC9260 to a Fritzbox 7490 and still manages 866Mbps no problems.

 

[AusWolf]

I'm sorry you had a negative experience with said BIOS, but you're placing a bit more emphasis on the EVALUATION COPY text than it really deserves. AGESA has been 5+ years of buggy BIOS releases, because AMD AGESA =! vendor implementation. It just looks like you haven't done enough BIOS flashing before now (as it should be, don't go flashing every release) to have this experience before today.

Exactly. A new BIOS fixes some things for my board, but breaks others. I have to go through several versions to find the one that works best and has the least amount of things broken. Beta or not doesn't matter, either. A beta works better sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. It's just how things work these days, unfortunately.

 

[1stFalloutboy]

Exactly. A new BIOS fixes some things for my board, but breaks others. I have to go through several versions to find the one that works best and has the least amount of things broken. Beta or not doesn't matter, either. A beta works better sometimes, but sometimes it doesn't. It's just how things work these days, unfortunately.

You guys both muse have had some really bad luck with BIOS's - this is the first time ever that I have installed a BIOS to correct a problem and had an issue with the BIOS, if and when I have needed to update a BIOS it has been a matter of install it and go, no ifs, no buts no maybes. In saying that , no motherboard I have ever had has ever had a BETA bios available for download ( that I am aware of ), if one of the BIOSes I downloaded in the past was BETA for any of my equipment there was no indication of it from the functional perspective. To have to " go through several versions to find the one that works best and has the least amount of things broken. Beta or not doesn't matter" would be from my perspective a reason not to buy from that motherboard manufacturer ever again.

 

[tabascosauz]

You guys both muse have had some really bad luck with BIOS's - this is the first time ever that I have installed a BIOS to correct a problem and had an issue with the BIOS, if and when I have needed to update a BIOS it has been a matter of install it and go, no ifs, no buts no maybes. In saying that , no motherboard I have ever had has ever had a BETA bios available for download ( that I am aware of ), if one of the BIOSes I downloaded in the past was BETA for any of my equipment there was no indication of it from the functional perspective. To have to " go through several versions to find the one that works best and has the least amount of things broken.

Yeah I've had a long and not-so-great history with AM4 AGESA...too long to list here. The more you flash, the more shit you find.

For my 5700G I'm still on an old beta BIOS that isn't available anywhere anymore. Because it was the only one within about a 6 month window that didn't nuke iGPU 3D performance. Gigabyte probably fixed it soon after but I just can't be arsed to find out, because I don't need anything from the new ones (fTPM I don't use, new CPUs the 5700G is not).

Basically, there are no guarantees, ever, whether a specific AGESA version (even those widely touted to have better performance) will actually offer better performance for you or are bug-free. Because vendors aren't saints and don't spend time personalizing a new BIOS update for every board in the lineup, often there are bugs that affect some boards but not others.

In the past, on Intel platforms, I would agree. Almost never needed to update the BIOS past release version, except for later CPU refresh compatibility. Intel is still quite a bit better (probably due in large part to them sticking to their old model and not embracing this AMD model of constantly rolling out new features in AGESA), but as Intel CPUs get more complex the cracks have also begun to show (launch microcode for RKL being subpar, AVX shenanigans on ADL, etc.). But still not nearly to the level of AGESA.

Beta or not doesn't matter" would be from my perspective a reason not to buy from that motherboard manufacturer ever again.

Unfortunately for us all, this would rule out every AMD board vendor, haha. Just how things are, I guess. From what I hear, ASRock's customer support often cares more than most when it comes to feedback about this firmware stuff. Asus probably sits at the opposite end of the spectrum.

 

[1stFalloutboy]

Yeah I've had a long and not-so-great history with AM4 AGESA...too long to list here. The more you flash, the more shit you find.

For my 5700G I'm still on an old beta BIOS that isn't available anywhere anymore. Because it was the only one within about a 6 month window that didn't nuke iGPU 3D performance. Gigabyte probably fixed it soon after but I just can't be arsed to find out, because I don't need anything from the new ones (fTPM I don't use, new CPUs the 5700G is not).

Basically, there are no guarantees, ever, whether a specific AGESA version (even those widely touted to have better performance) will actually offer better performance for you or are bug-free. Because vendors aren't saints and don't spend time personalizing a new BIOS update for every board in the lineup, often there are bugs that affect some boards but not others.

In the past, on Intel platforms, I would agree. Almost never needed to update the BIOS past release version, except for later CPU refresh compatibility. Intel is still quite a bit better (probably due in large part to them sticking to their old model and not embracing this AMD model of constantly rolling out new features in AGESA), but as Intel CPUs get more complex the cracks have also begun to show (launch microcode for RKL being subpar, AVX shenanigans on ADL, etc.). But still not nearly to the level of AGESA.



Unfortunately for us all, this would rule out every AMD board vendor, haha. Just how things are, I guess. From what I hear, ASRock's customer support often cares more than most when it comes to feedback about this firmware stuff. Asus probably sits at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Well I know with my Gigabyte board which had problems with it's GCC software I lit afire under them and they had it fixed within seven days because I really ramped up the pressure and made life uncomfortable, one of the bugs I made them fix had been in the software for five years and they'd done zero to fix it.

 

[AusWolf]

You guys both muse have had some really bad luck with BIOS's - this is the first time ever that I have installed a BIOS to correct a problem and had an issue with the BIOS, if and when I have needed to update a BIOS it has been a matter of install it and go, no ifs, no buts no maybes. In saying that , no motherboard I have ever had has ever had a BETA bios available for download ( that I am aware of ), if one of the BIOSes I downloaded in the past was BETA for any of my equipment there was no indication of it from the functional perspective. To have to " go through several versions to find the one that works best and has the least amount of things broken. Beta or not doesn't matter" would be from my perspective a reason not to buy from that motherboard manufacturer ever again.

I would agree, but I had this with different manufacturers. As @tabascosauz pointed out, it's more of an issue with AMD's AGESA than motherboard vendors themselves - although they're also at fault for rushing new versions out instead of properly testing them first.

For example, the factory BIOS on my MSi Pro B650M-A was a mess. It didn't work with EXPO, and gave me random blue screens at JEDEC default unless I increased the DRAM voltage by 0.05 V. Only a beta solved it (it was 1.50 or 1.52 I think). Then the "7800X3Ds blowing up" news surfaced, and MSi rushed out 1.70 that limited the max VSOC to 1.3 V, but introduced a higher than normal idle power consumption. My idle CPU temp rose by about 5 °C for no reason. I wanted to roll back to the beta, but it was taken off the site, and I didn't keep a saved copy. Now, we're on 1.80 or 1.85 which fixed the idle power consumption, but every time I change any setting in the BIOS, the Auto option on the VSOC decides to jump to 1.3 V even though there's absolutely no need for it to be that high. Setting it to 1.1 V manually, then back to Auto gives me 1.2 V again. I'm not sure when, or if MSi is gonna fix this.

 

[bug]

Check here, that message is probably benign: https://www.overclock.net/threads/gigabyte-z370-gaming-7-evaluation-copy-post-screen.1641648/

And in the odd case they did release some other binaries than intended, did you try redownloading? Since they haven't issued any other release, maybe they just uploaded the right stuff under the same version.

Hopefully this will teach you never to update your BIOS to a 1 day old version again.

It's not day 1 in the respect I have been using it since its release on ASUS's site in April with no problems, it has not been updated since, the version on ASUS's website now is the same as it was then and yet they are still touting it as updating the machine to make it ready for Windows 11.

As for what is going on with ASUS I think I may have hit a nerve, I downloaded the 2501 BIOS again this morning after finding an option in BIOS which allows me to switch between each of the two BIOS versions on board without using the switch on the rear IO area. This was a welcome surprise and allowed for some further testing.
With a freshly downloaded 2501 BIOS and 2401 on board I switched to the second BIOS which was showed as version 2001 and flashed it to 2501 I then verified by switching between the two BIOSes that I had 2401 and 2501 on board. I then attempted my previous operations with the 2501 I just installed after again doing the usual CMOS reset involved when doing BIOS updates.

Something has changed. The BIOS now acts normally and nothing like the way it was when it was failing to operate correctly.

I can now boot over ride without the BIOS having to save something and do a full reboot.
No longer suffer from cursor dance.
No longer have the EVALUATION COPY message.
No longer suffer system failure when booting to USB Recovery or Windows Installation media and having the display initialize.

Voila!

 

[Screamy]

I like to live life on the edge so i always update my bios every time there's an update. The chances of a bios update bricking something are very low these days. Plus it's exciting

 

[AusWolf]

I like to live life on the edge so i always update my bios every time there's an update. The chances of a bios update bricking something are very low these days. Plus it's exciting

... and totally unnecessary.

I don't find redoing my power settings and fan profiles from scratch every month or so particularly enjoyable, but each to their own, I guess.

 

[bug]

I like to live life on the edge so i always update my bios every time there's an update. The chances of a bios update bricking something are very low these days. Plus it's exciting

I loved dual BIOS fir the safety it added. BIOS updates aren't as risky they used to be, You just don't want a power cut or something like that while you do it.
I also feel adventurous and like to update it. But I skip many versions simply because I don't like what comes after a successful update: going into BIOS and trying to set everything back the way it was.