Whats the point of upgrading BIOS?

Lately, my Counterstrike Source would randomly freeze and I cannot figure out why which is quite annoying. I was told to upgrade my drivers but there are no drivers that support the X1700 of my A8JP. One other question I asked this on the owners lounge. But I was also wondering what the point of upgrading the BIOS of my laptop. I checked the newbie FAQ but it doesnt quite say why but just gives a direct link.

 

BIOS updates usually fix certain things...ie...there was a BIOS fix for my W3j that fixed the graininess issue w/ the x1600. It is kind of the backbone code of the computer if I'm not mistaken.

ie:
bī´ōs) Acronym for basic input/output system, the built-in software that determines what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk. On PCs, the BIOS contains all the code required to control the keyboard, display screen, disk drives, serial communications, and a number of miscellaneous functions.
The BIOS is typically placed in a ROM chip that comes with the computer (it is often called a ROM BIOS). This ensures that the BIOS will always be available and will not be damaged by disk failures. It also makes it possible for a computer to boot itself.

Drivers are a slightly different animal. They control the instructions and sometimes functions of the graphics card (hardware).

 

yep,
what he said
it fixes bugs in bios
so youll need to upgrade certain times

 

Ya, definitely good to upgrade.

A few years ago I bought a motherboard, called the ASUS K7M (Second Edition). It was crap. I tried to play Age of Kings on it and I would constantly have a turtle if I moved the screen around, and it lagged like mad. My 3DMark2001SE score was 50. I upgraded my video card to a nVidia GeForce4MX 440SE (now dead) and it went up to 200. I said, what the hell is going on here. Then I googled and googled and found that a new BIOS had been released because the original one with the K7M was total garbage and didn't properly allow signals to go between the graphix card and the rest of the system.

Long story short, I upgraded my BIOS and I went from a 3DMark score of 50 to 1500, and with the 440MX I now got a score of 3900. And the system as a whole ran 4x better - all because a stupid programming glitch was fixed and they added 'SuperByPass' mode.

Thats what came out of flashing the BIOS on my ASUS K7M. It's a smart thing to do, just make sure you read the instructions and don't touch it (or the powersource) when its upgrading...

Cat

P.S. Do a search, we already answered the question of the X1700 drivers being on the ATI website through the special link, you can get them and install them no problems

 

Though, if it ain't broke, no need to fix it.

 

how would i install a newer version of bios. I am very illiterate when it comes to this stuff. Would i uninstall older version first and then install the newer version..... something like a video card driver?

"P.S. Do a search, we already answered the question of the X1700 drivers being on the ATI website through the special link, you can get them and install them no problems"

I have been researching it for awhile on many sites. I hear you can install them. But powerplay isnt supported and some of the games crash i hear so Im not sure if its worth it although CSS does freeze even with this driver.

 

To make a long story short.
BIOS should only be updated if the update is needed. Then again, many times when an update is needed, it's needed badly and there is something running poorly in the system without it.

How to check: verify list of changes for that BIOS. It should be on the download site of the BIOS file.

How to upgrate: you don't need to "uninstall" anything, since the BIOS is just a chunk of flash memory 512KB in size on a special chip on the motherboard. This memory should get overwritten in the upgrade process; overwriting, once started, takes about 15 seconds. You need to download the BIOS file, i.e., the raw content of the new BIOS, 512KB in size. This is usually a ZIP file on the ASUS support page. Unzip it to get the BIOS file, which directly usable by the flash utility.

Flash utility: For many ASUS notebooks, there is an utility in the BIOS menu itself, accessible via pressing F2 during boot, and then navigating to "Start Flashing BIOS" or "Start Easy Flash Utility" or something like that. Otherwise, there is a DOS utility on the ASUS support site, and a Windows utility as well.

As always, I recommend that the upgrade be done with the BIOS utility if it is available, as it involves no Operating System (whether Windows or DOS) and therefore is much less prone to errors. And failure during BIOS writing means death for the computer (temporary death, since the chip can be removed and written anew by techsupport, but death anyway).

For the same reason, have a good amount of charge in your battery when starting the utility (more than 10 minutes worth of it). That way, you don't depend on the AC supply which might run out just in the critical few seconds.

Precise walkthrough for overwriting BIOS using the BIOS Flash utility:
1. Download BIOS.
2. Unzip into the root folder on a flash drive.
3. Insert flash drive.
4. Reboot, press F2 to go into BIOS, navigate to "Start Easy Flash Utility" or a similar name. Select this option.
5. At the ensuing explorer-like navigation screen, navigate to the flash drive and select the unzipped BIOS file.
6. Wait until BIOS is written. The computer will reboot itself.
7. Go into BIOS and select "Reset to Defaults"; either User or Manufacturer defaults.
8. Navigate around BIOS and select options the way you like them (boot device order etc.)