How often to update BIOS?

I am jinxed with BIOS updates, I only update if something stopped working or if my new upgrade requires it. Every time I touch it end up a days job making it work...may be because I don't upgrade often it is always you can't upgrade unless you have version xxx already installed, then I double the risk of trouble as I have to upgrade twice in stages :P
 
Mike_J_Smith said:
I did the update as it introduced some new features like resizable bar and some security fixes.

It did however give me some grief as it wouldn’t boot and then wouldn’t even post. Eventually worked out it was a gpu issue with me having the 7900xt on a riser cable. I had to put my 5700xt back in and set the PCI to 3.0 manually in the bios. It did go to bios the first time after flashing, so I guess I need to remember that in the future. Kind of sucks though tbh as I plan to watercool the 7900xt and then I wouldn’t have an easy time swapping the card.

I prefer CPUs with built in graphics!

Does the 5800x3d have built in graphics?
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I assume you've got a PCI‐E 3 riser cable? Get a 4 cable and you'll good, may even gain a few extra FPS.

I personally always update BIOS to the latest as you almost always get AGESA updates which in turn can bring performance improvements and fix compatibility issues etc.
 
SpudMaster said:
I assume you've got a PCI‐E 3 riser cable? Get a 4 cable and you'll good, may even gain a few extra FPS.

I personally always update BIOS to the latest as you almost always get AGESA updates which in turn can bring performance improvements and fix compatibility issues etc.
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Yes I've got a PCI 3 riser; will look into a 4. Any recommendations?
 
Usually only if theres a significant or impotant update b650 board I just bought the onboard bios dated to May the most recent was a few days ago and considering the drama over 7xxxX3D cpu's and overvoltage I though it important enough to make sure i flashed to the latest. Previous update was to the old board to allow 5800x3d chips as the old bios didn't support them. I started with a 0.9 and finished with a 4.x on that board so went through a fair few updates with that one
 
Seems to be a split between never/when strictly necessary; only when something useful changes and then a few do it regularly.

If you compared that to other hardware, eg GPU drivers, most would probably do that every time.

So why not the bios? If the manufacturer is updating it surely it’s better to be up to date for performance? It seems not because, to summarise, it’s a pain in the arse and goes wrong regularly enough to not be worth it. Surely by now motherboard manufacturers could get their act together and make it simple, painless and effective?
 
On my work laptop I get prompted by Dell to do them every few months it seems, but on my home own built unit, I updated the BIOS when I got it and probably wont again unless I have an issue or change parts that require it.
 
Mike_J_Smith said:
So why not the bios? If the manufacturer is updating it surely it’s better to be up to date for performance? It seems not because, to summarise, it’s a pain in the arse and goes wrong regularly enough to not be worth it. Surely by now motherboard manufacturers could get their act together and make it simple, painless and effective?
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I've done it loads of times and I've never had anything go wrong it is simple extract to a usb drive boot into the bios choose flash mode it'll reboot into that choose the bios version on the drive and go, takes a few minutes and theres a heart in mouth wait when you hope you don't have a unscheduled power cut but thats it. Almost all boards will have a way to revert to previous if something goes wrong these days though. That being said its recommended you don't flash bios unless you have to
 
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I'm 2 iterations behind my last bios flash and the latest bios from mid July 2023 offers a reason to update. This thread was the reason I checked. My system is stable and I'd have to recap and run a quick video on my phone just to cover any bios settings I have, and also can't be bothered to redo my bios tweaks, atm.

In no rush to update. I will add I have no fear updating a Bios. No power cut please. I don't want to waste some time restarting the process :)
 
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Mike_J_Smith said:
Seems to be a split between never/when strictly necessary; only when something useful changes and then a few do it regularly.

If you compared that to other hardware, eg GPU drivers, most would probably do that every time.

So why not the bios? If the manufacturer is updating it surely it’s better to be up to date for performance? It seems not because, to summarise, it’s a pain in the arse and goes wrong regularly enough to not be worth it. Surely by now motherboard manufacturers could get their act together and make it simple, painless and effective?
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I tend to find with AMD bios that performance generally declines as more stuff gets added, I know on my AM4 board that boost clocks got dropped by 50mhz and memory OC wasn’t as good so I rolled back to an older bios.
 
I tend to update regularly on a new platform and not so much once it’s matured. Will say though I have never killed a board through a bios update. At least so far ;)
 
I update on every BIOS release, with the amount of tweaks, changes or fixes that get added these days its always best to stay up to date. If a BIOS happens to be causing you an issue its extremely easy these days to roll back if you must.
 
if I'm changing the hardware in the system or upgrading the OS (eg, Win 10 to 11) then I'll usually do a BIOS update as well just to tidy things up and reduce the risk of problems.
 
Joxeon said:
I tend to find with AMD bios that performance generally declines as more stuff gets added, I know on my AM4 board that boost clocks got dropped by 50mhz and memory OC wasn’t as good so I rolled back to an older bios.
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I also noticed this, after bios update(AM4/5800X3D) memory latency increased from 58ns to 62ns and read/write speed decreased..
 
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