Gigabyte marketing BS

[Supercharged]

That's nothing!



I have a Gigabyte MB that is advertised with dual BIOS safe option (if 1 BIOS chip fails, after reboot, BIOS is read from second chip). And on my MB, both chips failed... At the same time. 

Funny thing: this motherboard has the same thing.

[kingofkya]

That's nothing!



I have a Gigabyte MB that is advertised with dual BIOS safe option (if 1 BIOS chip fails, after reboot, BIOS is read from second chip). And on my MB, both chips failed... At the same time. 

I have returned about 20 gigbyte g41 boards for that reasson:P too. If you guys are wondering the symptom the vga goes dead then if you reboot it it will not return.

But still not too bad to lose 20 out of about 300ish boards that were in use at the time for 5+ years.

[hamster_nz]

At least they didn't put a valve in there.

O. M. F. G. I have now seen it all.

[wraper]

I have returned about 20 gigbyte g41 boards for that reasson:P too. If you guys are wondering the symptom the vga goes dead then if you reboot it it will not return.

But still not too bad to lose 20 out of about 300ish boards that were in use at the time for 5+ years.

Does not sound like bios fail at all. Even if you remove the IC after the computer already have booted, computer will just keep working, no black screen. I wonder why so many people right away blame the bios if something fails. You can blame it without further investigation only if it failed during an update.

[Nerull]

That's nothing!



I have a Gigabyte MB that is advertised with dual BIOS safe option (if 1 BIOS chip fails, after reboot, BIOS is read from second chip). And on my MB, both chips failed... At the same time. 

I have returned about 20 gigbyte g41 boards for that reasson:P too. If you guys are wondering the symptom the vga goes dead then if you reboot it it will not return.

But still not too bad to lose 20 out of about 300ish boards that were in use at the time for 5+ years.

Since BIOS does a grand total of precisely nothing once a PC boots, it shouldn't affect VGA at all - so that seems to be an unlikely source of that particular failure mode.

Fun tip: An old desperation way to flash a new bios chip was to pull the chip out of a running system, plug in the blank one, run a flash, and then swap the chips back. Once booted, the PC doesn't care if you yank the bios. Many people seem to be under the impression that the BIOS chip is some sort of processor - it isn't. It's just CMOS memory. Its loaded into processor memory once, at boot up, and that's it. If your system fails while in use the bios chip wasn't the problem.

The one time I seriously suspected a bios chip failure, I had it replaced and the system still woudn't POST. Turned out to be a faulty PCI card. Always remove all unneeded components when troubleshooting, and replace them one by one - saves a lot of headache.

As to the dual bios thing not protecting against bad flashes - I haven't had a gigabyte board in a while, but I seem to remember it doing exactly that. It would never flash both chips at once, and if one failed to boot it would automatically fail over to the other. The second chip was a backup of a known good flash. In fact, protecting against bad flash is exactly what gigabyte markets it as doing!

People blame the BIOS for everything because they don't know what the real failure was and they just repeat something they heard someone else say. You see the same thing with cars - people will blame problems on all sorts of things when they don't know what's wrong - they're just repeating what they heard someone else blame problems on.

[rdl]

I thought the backup BIOS chip on the Gigabyte boards was actually read only (not flashable).

[wraper]

I thought the backup BIOS chip on the Gigabyte boards was actually read only (not flashable).

It is flashable if you press special key sequence during boot. Then it allows you to copy from the main bios. Also in some rare cases if bios update is very critical (like preventing blowing mosfets), both of the chips can be flashed during the update too.

[Nerull]

It might vary by model - I thought I remembered being able to flash the second bios from the BIOS setup menu, but their website says it always contains the factory flash, so perhaps they switched to read only or my memory is just faulty - that PC is over a decade old now.

[Srbel]

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[wraper]

What in the bloody f.ck do you want from me?! I have told you that BIOS chips failed, and you don't believe me. I don't care that you don't believe me! Who do you think are, so I need to prove anything to you??? F.ck off!

Do you have any critical thinking? I guess not, and I guess you have never repaired any motherboard, unlike me.
Why I don't believe you, well, for believing people should go to the church. Extraordinary claims (2 chips failed at the same time even without updating the firmware) need extraordinary proof. You are bashing someone (Gigabyte) for their technology not working, yet the reason why you believe this in this case don't sound very plausible, that's all.
BTW people who are checking the PC hardware for warranty cases and are not actually repairing, usually are clueless in electronics.

[Srbel]

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[wraper]

western scum! Thinks he is the smartest...

Please study the geography. And the forum rules too.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/forum-rules-please-read/

If you are offended by a remark, don't just assume the poster meant it to be offensive. Assuming that they didn't mean any offense is always a good first step.
In a public forum you have no right NOT to be offended by something. If you are offended by something someone said, and it wasn't directed at you, sad day for you, move on, there are more important things in life.

I will not waste my time on you

Completely agree with you.

[Nerull]

1. He's further east than you are.

2. You don't get to post slagging off a company for a failure and then blame it on something that doesn't make any sense and then cry when someone points out that it doesn't make any sense. Grow up.