A7V8X

[rssahlman]

I was looking at Asus bios flash program for windows that came with my new mobo A7V8x. There are two check boxes when flashing bios, can someone explain the ramifications.
1. clear cmos checksum to load default bios settings

2. reserve DMI data in flash rom

If I have the settings the way I want them shouldn't I not load default settings, and I don't understand no. 2 at all?????

Also does anyone know what are the new features added or what are the benefits of version 1010 or beta 1011 bios from the version 1005

Thanks

[NickS]

1. If they added/removed parameters stored in extended CMOS RAM, the CMOS data layout may have changed. For example, last year we had some people upgrading BIOSes who found that when they did not clear CMOS, they ended up with the BIOS password protected.

2. I don't know enough about DMI info to help.

[rssahlman]

so I should leave both those options checked just to be safe, correct?

do you know what the improvements of the newer updates are?

should I risk the beta 1011 or just go with 1010 update?

Thanks again

[NickS]

OK, I've just been doing a Google search on DMI. There are various versions of the DMI spec, so maybe it is safer to clear the DMI data as well. If you manage PCs you may have entered data manually using a utility and may not want to clear it, but I have always set the CMOS setting to "update DMI" when changing devices around in my PCs.

So that would be check "clear CMOS" and uncheck "reserve DMI data" ?

Using Beta 1011 vs 1010; I see the Beta is upto 1011-004 and they don't tell you what has been fixed/improved yet. Only you can decide, but personally I would take the 1010 official release and check back in a couple of weeks to see how 1011 is getting on.

[NickS]

BTW, if you click on the "more" text in the BIOS download page it tells you what has been fixed. For version 1009 it is a Gigabit LAN bug (if you have Gigabit LAN), for version 1010 it is CPU temperature sensor calibration IIRC.

[rssahlman]

Asus has supplied a windows based bios update program. Have you ever used it, and is is reliable? Although I imagine you must reboot before it actually works (I don't know). Any insite would be appreciated

[NickS]

@rssahlman: I haven't. My elder son has the A7V8X but he isn't at home this week so I can't ask whether he has tried it. I have always used the DOS mode flash utilities.

@world: Anyone else got an opinion ?

[Rainbow]

Better use AFLASH for DOS.