Out of warranty/EOL BIOS updates

S

Spartacus

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 29, 2005
Messages
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With this recent exercise of patches and BIOS updates for Meltdown/Spectre, I realized that older discontinued
systems (EOL) will probably never get BIOS updates with the new microcode for this issue.

I happened to have a brand new 8700K system and a brand new laptop, both of those had new BIOS releases
very quickly and are now updated for Meltdown/Spectre.

I also have a Z97 system that isn't really that old, but I suppose is still considered EOL. I'm thinking the mobo in
that system will never get a BIOS update for Meltdown/Spectre. I doubt my 3 year old server will get updates either.

While I understand that consumers have no "right" to expect BIOS updates on discontinued older equipment,
I will be watching to see which manufacturers have updated BIOS releases for their older products anyway.

Many of us may have a range of new & old equipment from the same manufacturer, but they only care about
what we bought recently. That's not very good customer service when you think about it.

It does bother me a bit that this is really an easy change for them to take their last BIOS release and just add
the updated microcode but they still won't do it. It will cost them time/money and they see no return on it.

Being in the IT business, I work with this stuff every day so will make note of which manufacturers go the extra
mile to release BIOS updates on older equipment. Good customer service makes a difference in what brand of
equipment I buy and that I recommend to my customers.

It may benefit all of us if we inquire about BIOS updates on all of our older systems.

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I agree with this. Interestingly, in my experience I have generally found Asus to be pretty good about updating firmware on older boards if new microcode/practical support for newer processors (AMD user, here) comes along - not perfect by any means, but their higher-end boards seem to get a little bit of this love.
 
Denpepe said:
I wil just post this here, take it for what you want https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/8/1...-meltdown-updates-fix-brian-krzanich-ces-2018
Click to expand...

Well, Intel will do their part to release microcode updates, but it's ultimately up to the mobo/systems manufacturers to get those microcode updates to us with BIOS updates.
I suspect many of them will be lazy about this and we will never see the updates.

On the Z97 system and the server I mentioned above, I consider the BIOS updates to be overdue now. We'll see if the updates start coming over the next 90 days or so.
The general attitude of manufacturers is to drop all support after the product is off the store shelves, I'm just kind of expecting that attitude will not change much.

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I have the following:

Asus laptop bought in 2014 - no BIOS updates since 2015, so I figure I'm SOL
HTPC - Gigabyte Z77 - no BIOS updates since 2013, figure I'm SOL there too
MAME arcade box - Abit IP35 Pro - definitely SOL there lol
Gaming PC - Gigabyte Z170X - BIOS update released last week

I'm hoping the software microcode fix posted above is good enough for the ones that don't have BIOS updates. I really don't want to have to replace all of those, though I'm considering updating my HTPC since I can do so for a couple hundred bucks. Why not, right? lol
 
Microcode updates were always delivered first via corresponding Windows/Linux binary blobs exactly for those boards, which do not get any updates, or the user is lazy to update. Remember how non-K OC was blocked via microcode update ? All the BIOS updates do is to push microcode update to POST, instead of OS loading.
 
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