Gogabyte 890XA-UD3 BIOS flashing issue

[grolyn]

I have this motherboard rev 1.0 and it has version F2 BIOS. Everything seems to be running fine except for one thing: it will not let me set multiplier of the CPU higher than 16x

I have AMD 1090t BE which has unlocked multiplier and I have tested the same CPU on a different brand (MSI) board with no problem. 19x multiplier at 225 MHz stable but MSI board keeps smoking out, I guess from inferior power regulators.

I suspect the BIOS needs to be updated but it seems the only way I can do it is with floppy disk drive. Not like MSI, which allowed me to flash the BIOS from USB drive. So I went to a nearby best Buy and got a disk drive for about $30. The geek squad assured me the USB drive will work but I can't get it to work at all. When I enter flash utility (end key at POST) and select drive, it gives me error about drive A not ready. The disk drive and a blank disk seems to work fine when I boot to Windows 7 so it can't be a bad drive or bad disk. Maybe I should take my rig and the drive back and tell them they have a choice: get the drive to work in flash utility and I pay them, or they refund me the disk drive.

How do I get the disk drive to work? Or is there another way to update BIOS? I don't have any other disk drive, I got rid of them all way back to, oh before Apple shocked the world by not having any disk drive in their iMac so it was like 12 years ago.

 

[bilbat]

?? about $30!?? Eeekk! ...and I was upset that these went up to $8 from $7!!

Shouldn't really be much in the way of possible screw-ups to prevent a flopy from just working - I recommend 'em all the time, as they're the 'no effort' default for a number of useful operations! Check your BIOS' "Standard CMOS Features" page - "Drive A" should be set to "1.44M/3.5""; "Floppy 3 Mode Support " should be "Disabled" - but both these should be the defaults...

You should also be able to flash from a USB stick. Couple 'gotcha's possible there... Drive must be formatted to FAT-32; on the BIOS' "Integrated Peripherals" page, you want "Onchip USB Controllers", "USB EHCI Controller", "USB Keyboard Support", and "Legacy USB Storage detect" all "Enabled" - and again, these are the defaults...

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Grolyn,

As Bill says, you have to enable the Floppy Controller in the BIOS before it will be recognized by the system.
Once your BIOS sees the floppy drive, then you have to FORMAT a floppy disk in preparation for use. Since you don't have any other 3.5" drives, that should be your first step in preparing the disc for the BIOS upgrade.

You will then need to download and copy the Gigabyte BIOS Update file to the floppy, and run the executable to expand the file in the root directory.
Then when you enter the Q-FLASH applet, it should see the floppy drive and the BIOS update to use.

 

[grolyn]

Best answer selected by grolyn.

 

[grolyn]

Thanks for the info. I did get the USB stick working. I must have hit the wrong setting when I was turning off useless features (serial port for example) The board's now updated to F5 and there's few extra options in the BIOS. I need to play with the setting to get overclocking.

$30 may be a bit high but it's what you pay to get a drive now and not wait over a week for it to arrive. plus it's much easier to return for refund locally.

 

[bilbat]

Always

!
...don't forget the <CTRL+F1> 'unlock' key at the main page - sometimes shows locked BIOS items that don't appear in the normal menuing setup!

I'm outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin - we have the same situation. Competition has weeded out pur 'local' choices to one firm with about six or eight outlets - you get the stuff now, and have a 'live' person (well, kind of live, anyway [:bilbat:2] ) to return it too - but, they carry something like four models of ASUS boards, five Intels, and you're gonna pay anywhere from +40% to +200% compared to on-line outlets... I would kill to have Fry's open an outlet here!!

 

[stellaortwa]

Hi There I have the same mobo as you and I just flashed the bios from a usb pen,GA-890xa-ud3, it had to be done with Q-flash.. Latest version is F6A. a little clip might help you<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yFLRCwhjujM?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yFLRCwhjujM?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>