Items tagged with BIOS
Security researchers have sounded the alarm on four BIOS vulnerabilities affecting 129 different Dell models, including various laptop and desktop systems, as well as some tablets. In total, it is estimated that around 30 million Dell systems are susceptible to the vulnerabilities and should be patched right away. Fortunately, Dell has issued updates for all affected models. If left unpatched, an attacker could execute malicious code without having physical access to a system, and it would run in the pre-boot environment. This is how rootkits normally operate—they corrupt the BIOS, so if a user wipes their system clean with a fresh OS install, or even swaps out the physical drive (SSD or...
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A month ago, AMD confirmed that many 500 Series motherboards were having problems with USB connectivity. The issues were long documented on the AMD subreddit, but it was comforting news from Ryzen enthusiasts to hear that AMD finally had their backs regarding this annoyance. ASUS today announced that it uploaded new AGESA 1.2.0.2 BIOS updates for its AMD 500 Series motherboards which should hopefully resolve any lingering issues with USB functionality. Obtaining the new AGESA 1.2.0.2 BIOS for your motherboard is relatively simple, as you need to just visit ASUS' support website and select Motherboards. Then select your Product Series and Product Model. Next, click "Driver & Utility" under...
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AMD made a splash last week by announcing its Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs based on Zen 3, with up to 16 cores and 32 threads, and a huge IPC (instructions per clock) uplift. What it did not do, however, is announce a new chipset. Whether one is coming or not for Zen 3 remains to be seen, but armed with the latest BIOS update for your X570, B550, or A520 motherboard, you should be able to POST with a Zen 3 CPU. In case you missed it, Zen 3 represents a 'take no prisoners' lineup. Core for core, Intel has generally maintained a lead in single-threaded workloads, and has held an advantage in overall gaming performance. That was before Zen 3 came along. If AMD's numbers and claims are correct, the...
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AMD heard the complaints from Ryzen 3000 series CPU owners that some chips were not hitting their advertised boost clocks as expected, and has issued new firmware code to its hardware partners to address the issue. What this means is, if you own a third-generation Ryzen processor, be on the lookout for a new BIOS update for your motherboard. The issue came to light when renowned overclocker Roman "der8auer" Hartung conducted an online survey of Ryzen 3000 CPU owners to see how many people were hitting the advertised boost clocks on their chips. Surprisingly, there were quite a few people said they weren't. On the low end of the spectrum, just 5.6 percent of Ryzen 9 3900X owners who participated...
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AMD's plan from the beginning of Zen was to have a single socket last for several generations of processor releases. Making good on that promise, AMD's upcoming Ryzen 3000 series of desktop CPUs will once again utilize the same socket, with many existing motherboards getting support by way of a BIOS update. Getting a head start on the launch, Gigabyte today announced new BIOS upgrades for its X470 and B450 motherboards. Gigabyte says its engineers have spent time testing and validating many of its existing motherboards with the newest BIOS updates to ensure full support for Ryzen 3000, and "top notch compatibility." As it stands right now, the latest BIOS releases are F40 and later, depending...
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AMD is planning to at least talk about its upcoming Ryzen 3000 series of desktop processors in a few weeks at Computex, and the expectation is that it will be launching the new CPUs at that time. As that date draws closer, motherboard makers are prepping for the event with new models based on the upcoming X570 chipset. What about existing 300 and 400 series motherboards? At least one company has begun rolling out BIOS updates. That company is ASUS, and it has already made available BIOS updates for around three dozen X470, B450, X370, and B350 motherboard models. "ASUS will release BIOS updates for its 300 and 400 series motherboards to add support for next-generation AMD Ryzen CPUs. The latest...
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AMD has run into a bit of trouble with a "specific boot issue" that might be affecting some second gen Ryzen desktop processors, specifically Raven Ridge APUs, when those chips are socketed into an early AMD Socket AM4 mainboard. According to AMD, since the release of the AMD Socket AM4 mainboards in early 2017, alongside the Ryzen desktop processors, there have been several BIOS updates made available through board partners. AMD wrote, "These updates not only provide improved system performance but also expand support for newer processors as they become available." The rub for owners of Ryzen chips and Socket AM4 boards is that in February, when the Second Gen Ryzen desktop Processors...
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Intel is getting ready to kick legacy BIOS support to the curb, with future platforms taking full advantage of the UEFI Class 3, the most recent version of UEFI. That is already the case for many Intel systems already shipping. By 2020, Intel wants to move on completely, removing BIOS support from UEFI. That means all of its client and datacenter platforms will no longer have a legacy BIOS mode. Image Source: Flickr (Paul Schultz) BIOS, or Basic Input/Output System, is the firmware that initializes hardware when booting up a system. It worked fine for a time, but by around the mid 1990s, its limitations starting catching up to newer systems, in particular larger server platforms that Intel was...
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AMD graphics cards are no stranger to BIOS modifications to “unlock” previously unsupported functionality. Back in April, we reported of enthusiasts flashing Radeon RX 480 GPUs with the BIOS from the RX 580 in order to unleash additional performance. Now we’re hearing that the AMD’s new Radeon RX Vega 56 is ripe for BIOS modification. Some rather enterprising folks first attempted to install a Vega 64 BIOS onto a Vega 56 in an effort to unlock additional compute units. However, these efforts were thwarted, as it appears the inactive CUs cannot be restored using BIOS trickery. However, flashing a Vega 56 with the BIOS from a Vega 64 did have one beneficial side effect: it bumped up the default...
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Update: 6/26/2017, 8:59PM EST - Our contacts at Intel have responded to our requests for further detail on this issue with the following statement: "We have already identified this issue and addressed it with a fix that started rolling out in April 2017. As always, we recommend checking to make sure your BIOS is up to date, but the chance of encountering this issue is low, as it requires a complex number of concurrent micro-architectural conditions to reproduce."And so it's clear that Intel feels this issue is limited in scope and very hard to trigger. Further, the fix was documented and released to OEMs and motherboard vendors in April. However, it's of course incumbent upon system...
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So you bought a GeForce GTX 1080 or 1070 graphics card from EVGA with a fancy ACX 3.0 cooling solution and now you're worried it's going to burn up, is that it? Well turn that frown upside down. EVGA announced earlier this week that it was working on a VBIOS update that would instruct affected cards to more aggressively cool themselves, and that update is now available. The overheating issue came to light when several users posted some alarming temperature readings on Reddit and EVGA's support forum. In some cases, users posted pictures of purported charring on certain components, while others complained of black screens and other anomalies. Testing on the web showed that parts of the PCB on...
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Lenovo is finding itself embroiled in yet another security scandal, and this time it revolves around the BIOS used in many of its PC systems. According to security researcher Dmytro Oleksiuk (aka Cr4sh), the vulnerability lies in the SystemSmmRuntimeRt UEFI driver component of Lenovo’s firmware. Oleksiuk claims that the exploit is present in every ThinkPad machine dating back as far as the X220 and as recently as the T450s. The vulnerability can allow a malicious party to run System Management Mode code on a machine, granting the ability to not only disable flash write protection, but also Secure Boot. It’s also possible to bypass the Virtual Secure Mode (VSM) that is used by Windows 10...
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In enterprise environments, it's long been accepted that keeping a particular machine "100%" safe requires little more than keeping it off of an external or internal network, making sure to disable its network devices - wired or otherwise - and of course, disabling its optical drives and USB ports. A machine can't get infected when all of its data transmission lines are closed, right? Wrong, according to security consultant Dragos Ruiu and the league of colleagues that side by his research. Three years ago, Ruiu's MacBook Air was acting strange. The oddities began with an auto-updated EFI firmware, and later moved on to the disabling of the ODD and removal of some data. Typical trojan behavior...
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Overclocking used to be a dark art reserved for a power users who didn't mind taking potentially catastrophic risks in order to squeeze a few more ounces of free performance out of their components. Things have changed dramatically in recent years, but lest anyone forget, overclocking can still be dangerous, even with all of the modern day safe guards. YouTube user "japan0827" found this out the unfortunate way when his overclocked system went up in smoke...literally (see video here). He was using a Gigabyte X79-UD3 motherboard and narrowed the culprit down to a faulty MOSFET that couldn't handle the stress from the board's CPU VRM. Pictures are littered all over the Web on various forums, and...
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MSI announced its AMD AM3 motherboards as well as BIOS upgrades for MSI’s AM3 motherboards to enable support for AMD’s new generation AM3+ multi-core processors. Through the BIOS upgrades, MSI says users will be able to take full advantage of the power of AMD AM3+ multi-core processors without extra expenses. In addition to providing the BIOS upgrades to consumers, MSI will upgrade the BIOS on new AM3 motherboards before shipping. A list of the MSI AM3 motherboards that will support the AMD AM3+ multi-core processors is below. Note: As we've pointed out previously, the official word from AMD is that Bulldozer will only be supported on AM3+ motherboards. As a result, it may not be...
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Grand Theft Auto has always served as the poster boy for video games that drive parents and government officials up the wall. Take-Two Interactive Software took a lot of heat for the violent and sexualized content, and made a whole lot of money selling it. But they've had trouble coming up with a follow-up to their signature title. It looks like their gamble on the new first person shooter -sort of- called " BioShock" is just what the doctor ordered for their ailing bottom line. The game is part first-person shooter, horror flick, and morality tale. Players explore a failed underwater utopia torn apart by clashes over a DNA-altering substance that bestows health and superpowers....
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2K Games' Bioshock Pre-Orders Available via Steam NEW YORK, NY, August 16, 2007 - Valve today announced that BioShock, the highly-anticipated and award-winning first-person shooter by 2K Games is available for pre-purchase now via Steam®. Starting today, gamers can pre-order BioShock on Steam (www.steamgames.com) for $49.95, and begin playing the moment the game is made available. One of the most anticipated games of 2007, BioShock is the "genetically enhanced" first person shooter that lets players do things never before possible in the genre - turn everything into a weapon, biologically modify your body with plasmids,...
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According to our current poll, Bioshock is one of the more highly anticipated games scheduled to be released, with only Crysis and UT:3 receiving more votes. Well, it turns out that Bioshock fans are a little bit closer to getting their hands on the final game. As of last night, the demo for Bioshock was made available for download on the Xbox 360. And according to the 2kgames website, a PC version of the demo is only a few weeks away... "The BioShock demo, announced after the world premiere of the BioShock launch trailer on Spike TV, has just now gone live on Marketplace. Boot up your 360s and get downloading. Rapture awaits. For those of you who are looking for a BioShock demo on the PC,...
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Though AMD's AM2 socket might be new technology, getting a motherboard that supports AM2 isn't as expensive as you might think. Biostar has released a very capable motherboard that's based on Nvidia's nForce 550 chipset, the Biostar TForce 5500. Though it might be light on features, you can't argue against a stable and well performing $80 motherboard. "At stock settings the Biostar TForce 550 proved to be an excellent motherboard that delivered great benefits at a small price. If you are looking for a value motherboard that delivers great basic features and performance of the new AM2 processor, the Biostar TForce 550 should...
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There is a very informative article on-line today over at Lost Circuits. Mike Schuette go into great detail on HT link and bus control, memory timings, and numerous other Athlon 64 BIOS settings. Even the most experienced amongst you will learn something from this article... "The Command Per Clock sets the Command Rate for the memory controller. At 1T, the controller can issue commands on every clock cycle, if set to 2T, the controller can issue commands only on every other bus cycle. A 2T command rate can be somewhat problematic for a number of reasons. In a first generation DDR architecture, the 2 T command rate can cause bus contention...
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If you're a 7800GT owner that's not ready to take the plunge and do a hardmod to raise the voltage on your video card, you can still raise it by using a simple BIOS update(softmod). NGOHQ has the file, and some forum discussion on the matter. "Not everybody knows how to perform a voltage mod. Today we're giving 7800GT users a small gift - this universal 7800GT BIOS image contains a small voltage mod of 0.1v in 3D mode, meaning you will be able to overclock your 7800GT even higher." Be really, really careful when doing this mod though. Most of the time, even just overclocking your card can void the warranty, not to mention actually changing the BIOS. The reward is a faster card, but...
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For the last few years, there has been an undeniable trend towards packing all the functionality and performance of a full-fledged desktop system into a smaller form factor. As one of the chief pioneers of this new form factor, Shuttle enjoyed having dominant market share as they were one of the only true contenders in the SFF category. Fortunately for consumers, several new vendors have begun to show interest in SFF systems and are now offering some very viable solutions of their own. Biostar is one such company and they are attacking the SFF segment with a vengeance. Today, we'll be looking at the new iDEQ 350G to see how Biostar is aiming to take over the SFF market. As one would expect, the...
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