How to flash gigabyte 990fxa-ud5 to v5 w/o cpu

[gtrbarbarian]

Hi all,

I'm about to embark on a build for the upcoming bulldozer fx-8150. In preparation, I have purchased a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 motherboard...I am thinking that it will need to be upgraded to v5 so it properly supports AM3+ bulldozer cpus...however I am not upgrading from a phenom ii, but doing a new build....How can I flash the bios without a phenom ii chip handy?

 

[Terminatez]

I'm pretty sure u can flash it either way, just format ur flash drive to fat, then restart pc, and press "end for q-flash i think" and look for the drive in there to flash, it will show up when u click it it will say erasing old bios and copying new bios.

Wait untill someone else confirms about the CPU thoguh, not sure if it will cause problems flashing ur bios

 

[gtrbarbarian]

Thanks...hopefully the bios will come up without a cpu installed....otherwise, I'll have to return the motherboard...I don't want to have to buy a cheap phenom ii just to install a bios upgrade for am3+ for a board that is supposed to already be "am3+" ready!

Hopefully someone will chime in about this...

 

[RGone]

Without a cpu the bios cannot be flashed. When a board begins to boot the bios "begins" the process of unpacking the bios file to ram and the cpu is what powers this process. The board will not recognize any drive without bios unpack.

 

[gtrbarbarian]

That's kind of what I figured....would you take a chance that this motherboard will run the fx-8150 without the bios upgrade in order to flash it or return it? (I'm leaning towards returning it, although I really like the board's feature set!)

 

[RGone]

This is just my opinion but I would return the board and hold off a purchase for the BD cpu until we see some reports of what is what. You cannot upgrade your bios to F5 without a cpu and many have bought a cpu and are running the board now and with a cpu in the board they can upgrade to bios F5 and move to BD. \

Gigabyte has not gone to the EFI type bios yet and there will be some features in Win8 that will only function with EFI type bios as I understand it. Who knows for sure but I am hearing that might be the situation. Noone can know anything for sure in todays market. Look at how long has been the wait for BD after many so-called release dates.

I spent about an hour reading the last 1/3 of a long 140 odd page thread at OCN and I was not overly impressed with the way things are going. There seems to be a later released/revision UD5 board and it seems to have bios in place for the BD's already. Certainly would be what you would have to have if you are not going to run any cpu but BD.

So I think a return and buy something later is your best option and make REAL sure the later board is BD ready with bios and all. Of course you will need to do as you see fit. Luck all around man.

 

[gtrbarbarian]

Thanks for the input....! Hmmm... well I guess I could go with an i5-2500k and get a motherboard to match...but I know ivy bridge is coming out soon, I believe the socket type is changing from lga1155 to lga2011, so that would mean a motherboard with no upgrade path...damnit, nothing is stable in the hardware world, whatever I buy will be outdated by tomorrow....

 

[RGone]

It seems in this world there is no build for a period of time. Well in somethings at least. But the bios update thing is not really the boards fault. IF you had bought and used a cpu as so many early adopters of the 990FX chipset did, then you would flash bios and move on. The problem arises from early board purchase but non-use. Buy a cheap $50.00 cpu and flash or RMA the board and buy when you are sure the bios of any brand board is shipping with a BD bios. Or check with your buds as they may have a cpu laying around that you could flash with.

Sandy Bridge boards will or should eventually take an IvyBridge cpu and that should give a little leeway for future upgrade. Honestly from what I see of those using SandyBridge with 2500K or 2600K...I mean how much more can one need in the next two years? For real I mean.

Anyway that is as concise as I can make the basic idea of where you find yourself today.