Buying Bios ? surely not ?

[TamiyaCowboy]

i went too get a update bios for my mother board as it is old and starting too become slightly tempremental.

so i type in my mobo into google and find myself at american megatrends and the update page. so clicking the get bios now im faced with a £29.99 bill :eek: WTF is this i paid for the machine surely these things come as a free upgrade ? i wanted too flash my bios so i can see if i get any extras like slightly more volts etc etc an hoping for a slight increase in the fsb from 400 too 500+mhz.

do you guys have too pay for your bios ? if not why is this company trying too leach money from my pocket
the link too the site trying too charge me is http://www.esupport.com/global/model.cfm?model=5955

thanks guys

[AWACS]

go to your motherboard manufacturers site... they should offer free bios updates

[fivecheebs]

Yup rip off! Manufacturers site would be the best bet, but its not easy to find updates for some of the budget boards sometimes.

[zittware]

Actually, sometimes this is a good thing... esp if it's an older board that is no longer supported by the manufacturer.

Sometimes they new bios guys will add "features" not present in the original bios... like supporting newer processors or steppings.

Having said that; I'm not sure I'd buy from these guys... only if I KNEW they were providing something I'd use.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

£30 is almost halfway to a new mother board so i wouldnt pay it.

[Greeny]

You can have a new BIOS chip shipped to you with the BIOS you want preloaded for half that price.

[TamiyaCowboy]

You can have a new BIOS chip shipped to you with the BIOS you want preloaded for half that price.

my bios chip is soldered too my board directly and my soldering is somewhat shady lol i have melted components before when soldering :o).

im leaving the bios thing now that price gave me a heart attack

[lbreevesii]

my bios chip is soldered too my board directly and my soldering is somewhat shady lol i have melted components before when soldering :o).

im leaving the bios thing now that price gave me a heart attack

ohh lord...if you ever start messing with mobo chips, worse yet surface mount components use a video camera so we can all get a chuckle:wiz:

[Greeny]

Soldered. Eeuugh. Is this still the emachine?

[TamiyaCowboy]

Soldered. Eeuugh. Is this still the emachine?

well its the emachines mated with a thermaltake case and other bits and bobs

yup tix the emachines :o) feel ashamed of that word now. i asked that esupport a few questions in a chat room, first was what is max ram type i can use, answer was what is your model number and serial number. gave this too them then popped another question. where do i update my bios from. waited ten mins too be given a uk premium phone number and some daft email addy lol well does esupport your customer service is like a english field .. full of horse dung :lol:. thats the reason i gave up on a bios upgrade. i just dome a super pi test and got just over 11s

[fivecheebs]

Man i hate calling those support centers, gladly i dont have to very often any more.

Just FYI super Pi is usually run to 1M places, its kind of an unwritten rule, but thats how people compare scores on the same playing field.

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

Man i hate calling those support centers, gladly i dont have to very often any more.

Just FYI super Pi is usually run to 1M places, its kind of an unwritten rule, but thats how people compare scores on the same playing field.

It was 1 minute 11 seconds...

[TamiyaCowboy]

It was 1 minute 11 seconds...

yes was my silly mistake my machine topped out at 1m 11s :o) so looks like i need too shave of 60s from somewhere. i can understand how you guys get 35s readings you must have turbo propped cpus and aviation fueled ram.

what are main components tested with super pi? is this ram-cpu-fsb

[Da_Rude_Baboon]

I am not 100% sure tbh but i think it is a measure of the 3 you mentioned but mostly CPU orientated.

At stock speeds my CPU did it in 40 seconds. OC'ing the CPU took it to 30 with the RAM running slowly on a large divider. OC'ing the RAM to match the CPU took it down 28 so that indicates its a CPU centric test. Also i'm using a completly clean install of windows with only the nessecary drivers installed as i'm testing out my new hardware for stability. When i have all my usual apps and stuff installed it might increase the time by a few seconds. Also the time i posted was using a 24/7 stable setup. I can push my CPU higher and get a faster time but if i tried to do anyting more intensive it would crash.

The weird thing is although my PC is now all tuned up and is faster in widnows it takes longer to boot up then it did when everything was stock.

[fivecheebs]

hehe ... yea i saw that in the superpi thread after i replied in here... :lol:

Get a decent board, and some faster RAM and you'll knock it down to around 40 secs i'd guess. [edit] Or maybe not if DRBs opty does 40 at stock.... I'd guess that PC2100 is affecting the times quite considerably though.

[TamiyaCowboy]

hehe ... yea i saw that in the superpi thread after i replied in here... :lol:

Get a decent board, and some faster RAM and you'll knock it down to around 40 secs i'd guess. [edit] Or maybe not if DRBs opty does 40 at stock.... I'd guess that PC2100 is affecting the times quite considerably though.

i have given up on computer fella its more hastle than a runnaway nitro truck. stupid ram dont work, mobo is the most usless ever made and shouldnt be sold. and emachines computer suck big time. all the stuff the dude said when i brought it is total rubbish. (easy too upgrade etc etc etc) its last time i trust a large named company

ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH (i feel slightly better for that now)

[fivecheebs]

Unfortunately it seems its always the case when you buy a prebuilt PC. Some companys are worse than others, but the hardware is chosen mostly for its pricepoint. The one man band, bispoke system builder will look for stability and quality at a given budget as they dont have the infrastructure to cope with failures like the large company.

If you got a well researched OEM motherboard your PC experiance will be miles better, even with the current ram.

[TamiyaCowboy]

can understand but why does sutch a large company import machines that are totaly worthless ? top of the range they said it was more like dino poop.

its totaly frazzled my pockets cheebs. i have sold nearly all my rc stuff too get this rubbish to a starndard that would just make the grade. am now left with 1 micro rc and out of pocket by nearly half a grand from selling my racing trucks :-(

[ỒĊBłůē]

can understand but why does sutch a large company import machines that are totaly worthless ? top of the range they said it was more like dino poop.Because the majority of folks buying their PCs will be quite happy with them, and won't tinker with them at all (the misguided fools! :lol:)

[Tattoo]

I went through this same thing not too long ago. My current rig was built by me and a friend (who knew a lot more than me at the time) and we used an Epox mobo and XP 2500+ (not a great stepping at all tho, unfortunately).

Anyway, recently I found out about bios flashing, and went to the manufacturer's site and go the latest bios version and flashed it, but it was dated like 2/11/04. I then tried award/phoenix tech as they're the chipset. Their link to flash the bios led me to a pay site. Not realizing I'd have to pay, I filled in all the information and the site said they'd get back to me in a couple days with my new bios version.

WRONG.

I had a darn telemarketer try to convince me to buy the new BIOS! he went on and on about how my current bios wasn't geared to handle WinXP and so on and so on, and wanted $60!! I politely laughed my ass off in his ear, and hung up.
A couple days later I get an email stating that they're now running a "special" and the same bios version is only $24.95!

I was tempted for all of about 5 minutes, but finally logic got the better of me. I'm building a new rig anyway, and it's socket a. If I need a better board, I can get a socket A for really cheap, and no worries about messing something up when I flash that way.

Now, instead of bothering with that, i found a great deal on a micro atx board that's got socket 754. So my next project might be a very small micro atx comp, custom modded of course, for my step-son. hehe