It comes with a Windows utility for flashing the BIOS. A few clicks and it's done! Don't let BIOS updates put you off dude.
I just worry about things like a power cut half way through and ending up with a dead board. I'll have to be brave at some point though. Maybe I should run a pole asking how many boards folks have trashed in their lifetime doing bios updates.
Does the ICH9 chipset always take ages to scan for arrays when RAID is enabled? Or is it just this board? Seeing as I have to reboot a lot (s3 prob) it just takes tooo long to boot with RAID enabled on the ICH9. So I'm using the 2 gigabyte SATA ports for my RAID array. No probs with that, apart from the drivers are not certified for Vista 64bit, so it won't boot unless you do the F8 thing. Which is a pain if you're using a wireless keyboard. I have to keep a PS2 keyboard nearby just to boot Vista 64. I guess I'll have to switch my RAID over to the ICH9 which adds time to the boot. Little niggles eh I'm sticking with Abit and Asus in future I think
Mate, don't worry about it. When was the last time you had a power cut? Chances are slim. I think there are 2 bioses on the board anyway. Its' really not worth worrying about Just run stock speeds when you do it, just to be sure.
Had a 2 minute outage yesterday as it happens. I'll try not to worry, instead I'll log in here and ask for help and moral support.
ah ok It doesn't take long. I don't know the ins and outs of the "dual BIOS" but I think it will sort itself out in the event of a bad flash. Don't quote me on that though!
mushky, do you know if the S3 standby problem effects only the EP35-DS3R, or if it also effects the P35-DS3R?
I'm running the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R rev. 1 motherboard with a 6420 chip at the moment. It was a dream to set up. As far as flashing the bios, I saved the old one to a .bin file and went ahead with the flashing utility they provide in Windows. Luckily it was smooth as silk with no problems, although I was on pins and needles until everything booted fine. It makes the second stellar GB board I own. My other fave is ASUS. Won't be doing any overclocking until my watercooling is set up.
Both as far as I know, maybe other Gigabyte boards too. There is a patch for it on the driver CD but it didn't work. They obviously know about it.
Abit Ip35 Pro. It has the uguru utility, and it handles oc like a champ. And it has a really cool led readout thing that i can see through the front of my case.
only 3 mention of Abit iP35 series?!? out of those Gigabyte boards? limited by my RAM, but i expect with PC2-8000+ RAM's, i should be able to do 4Ghz without problem so for ease of overclocking, Abit wins by far!
I've just got an MSI P35 NEO2 and its brilliant. Very stable, lots of features, loves my e8200 aswell.
Nothing against the Gigabytes (I have the P35-DS3L), but I think the Asus P35 BIOS has a few more overclocking features, maybe concerned with memory and graphics card tweaking. Bit vague, but I saw some review and thought "I haven't got that...". On BIOS flashing, most failures I've heard of have been user-error - interrupting the process half-way or even using the wrong BIOS for the board. Though with a board that's been out a while you should get a decent bug-free BIOS, the newer versions mostly just add the latest processors. With the Gigabytes you can save your custom settings and flick over to default or "safe" settings for flashing. And for no risk of a Win BSOD, you can't beat flashing from floppy or pendrive.
+1 for Abit IP35. I love mine Only problems are resuming from standby and USB keyboard support whilst it is booting (e.g if Windows says you last session failed to resume from standby, would you like to continue or start from scratch). The latter has only happened twice in the last couple of months though, both when I was still setting everything up.
I've got my E6420 running 3.4GHz on my Asus P5K-E and it hasn't hiccuped once. Great overclocking features and very stable and not too hard on the wallet.
Hope you can get one of the BIOS recovery methods to work, if that fails, lob the board in the rubbish bin?