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.