Is BIOS flashing safe :S

I got the P55-UD4P. I checked on Gigabyte's website yesterday and it said that they have a new beta BIOS which is upgraded from the F3 one. It says it provides better OC capabilities or something. Should I get this one?

I also read that @BioS is a really bad tool for flashing the BIOS and to use Qflash. Is flashing the BIOS safe? If I stuff it up can I recover it easily?

As a rule of thumb if your system is completely stable with no issues whatsoever, then there's no point in flashing the bios especially with a beta bios.

If you're dead set on flashing the bios, be sure the new bios file is an official one, not a beta. Beta bios files are not official and can cause more harm than good.

I've flashed many, many times with @BioS with no issues, but switched to Q-Flash just because it's a lot faster than having to wait for the desktop to load. Drop the file on a USB drive and that's all you need for Q-Flash. I always load fail-safe defaults and reboot prior to flashing to rule out any settings that may cause an issue.

The dual BIOS *should* recover with the back-up BIOS from a bad flash unless something goes really, really, really wrong.

I had a bad flash once on a Gigabyte board. Not much happened really. As Ross points out. There is the backup to fall back on. If the board supports DualBIOS. The better boards offer this as a standard feature now. If in doubt, check if it has it.

While I noticed it did work as I hoped for. I did in the back of my head. Expect something to go wrong. There is a risk of it going bonkers while doing it. I always shudder that the power will go out half way through. Which is auto-bork for a machine. Since once you start. You cannot stop the update. Or your in for a world of hurt.

The reason I attempted a BIOS upgrade. Is that I read in the changelog. It supported a CPU I was looking to get, which the version I was using did not.. Otherwise I would of not flashed. Gigabyte BIOS normally, in most cases are hardware updates. Since on usual, the BIOS are pretty stable. I did eventually, get it to flash correctly.

Gigabyte does offer on the update pages, beta BIOS selections.. Just look at the changelog to see if it is worth the effort to try it out. In most cases. If your machine works. Wait for them to put it in mainline before updating.

Thanks for the input guys! My motherboard is one of the newer ones so it should have dualBIOS.

When a new BIOS comes out, I'll just update. I just like to feel up to date.. lol

P55-UD4P has dual BIOS, I have one here and have flashed it about 4 times in 3 weeks One thing Gigabyte is really good at is constantly working on BIOS revisions for better performance/compatibility. There are usually many "in-between" betas before any are released as official beta on the site, so official betas should be pretty safe.

OK i just want to let the people who worry about how to flash a BIOS. We upgrade motherboard BIOS 50 times a day with the windows version bios update and i have never seen one go bad. Maby its just the Intel boards are rock solid or its all a myth.

Flashed my Maximus X38 with a Rampage X48 BIOS
Flashed my 8800GTX with higher clocks
Flashed my 8800GTS with higher clocks

Never had any problem whatsoever. If you follow the instructions you should be fine.