Asrock bios problems

[mrsnazzypants]

Hello, i recently upgraded the bios on my asrock z68 extreme4 gen3 motherboard from 1.20 to 2.10, i own a i7 2600k sandy bridge cpu and this new bios made my system unusable as the bios is designed for ivy bridge cpu.

Afte reading about this problem all over forums i not being able to find a way to downgrade i realized that the only way to fix this problem was with a new bios chip.

Asrock did finally get in touch with me about the problem and confirmed that there is no way to downgrade and the only way forward was a new bios chip which they said they would supply.

Anyway,, my new bios chip with 1.20 arrived this morning, i replaced it and my old bios was back, i booted up and none of the problems had gone, my graphics cards still didnt work and neither did my usb ports on my back panel.

This is where i think the problem lies, when i had a look in bios, it was the old uefi, not the brand new blue one BUT all the new options that the new one brings where still there, most notably the gpu overclocking options that where not present on the 1.20 bios before.

I contacted the guy at asrock that ive been dealing with and he confirmed that those options should not be there and he couldnt explain it and asked if i could send him some pictures, i made him a video of me flicking through the bios and emailed it to him, ive not heard back from him and this was 10 hours ago and he usually emails me back with in 10 min so im thinking hes no idea what has happened.

Could there somewhere on my motherboard still be some of 2.10 bios stored???
I have no idea how the bios works so i dont know, this is really annoying me now as i dont have a clue on what to do, i thought this new bios chip would fix everything and id be back gaming tonight.

 

[mrsnazzypants]

no, there is countless threads on forums with people who have upgraded to 2.10/2.20 and had massive problems because it no longer supports sandy bridge, only ivy bridge, its the ime that causes the problem.


this what the guy at asrock said about the problem.


To start with this is not really an ASRock issue, it is an Intel issue, and all manufacturers have this issue.
Before a CPU is on the market, we receive engineering samples from Intel, and those we use to create our BIOS.
Unfortunately it turns out that the production CPU is much different (stepping) from the engineering sample, and that is where the problem starts.
The difference between the Ivy bridge CPU and the Sandy bridge CPU, is the built in PCIE 3.0 and USB3 through the chipset, and for that to work, the Intel Management Engine software in the BIOS has to be updated, and that is also the reason why it is almost impossible to downgrade the BIOS, since it cannot downgrade the IME software in the BIOS properly.
And it is not a custom BIOS tat we send to our customers, it is the latest Sandy bridge BIOS that has been on our website, however these are all removed since it is not possible to downgrade the BIOS (we tested this ourselves).
Next to that Intel is rapidly manufacturing new steppings (versions) of the same CPU, so this makes it a bit complicated to create a BIOS that can uses all CPU’s.
The only advantage that you will have with an Ivy bridge CPU is the PCI Express 3.0 that is supported by the Z68 chipset, but the Ivy bridge BIOS is of no use to you if you don’t use a top grade PCIE 3.0 grahpics card combined with this CPU.
You can still download the BIOS 1.20 that was on our website, it is still there, but the link has been removed:
http://europe.asrock.com/downloadsite/bios/1155/Z68%20Extreme4%20Gen3(1.20)ROM.zip
Some people claim they managed to downgrade the BIOS, but we couldn’t reproduce the issue, that is why the links have been removed.

 

[stickg1]

BIOS 2.20 works fine with Sandy and Ivy. Either the BIOS was not installed properly or there is another issue at hand.

Actually I had BIOS 2.10 installed on my Z68 Extreme3 Gen3. I can see the file in my downloads folder still.