"No GOP support detected in this card . . .?" What's this about?

[trents]

Someone please explain to me what's going on with this.

The motherboard is an MSI B450i Gaming Plus AC. Video card is a Radeon RX 580. The card was bought used but as far as I know its bios has not been altered or hacked.

After upgrading the motherboard bios from 7A40vA4 to 7A40vAB (the latest) the computer seems to be running fine but the bios user interface is much less graphic. Very plain, black, gray and white lists. The A4 version was much more graphical.

I noticed in poking around in the bios settings there is an option for either UEFI or CSM. When I choose “UEFI” the computer won’t boot.

There is also a message saying: “There is no GOP support detected in this card. ‘Bios UEFI/CSM Mode’ settings in Bios will be changed to ‘Disabled’.

What is going on here?
Why can’t I just use the bios in UEFI like before?
What does my video card have to do with this?

 

[notarat]

Thanks, Trump!

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks, Trump!

What is going on here?
Why can’t I just use the bios in UEFI like before?

This has to do with the size of the BIOS chip on your mobo and BIOS file size with the new AEGESA updates. Here is a quick read from July 2019:

AMD succeeded in delivering on its backwards-compatibility promise for the 3rd generation Ryzen processors on motherboards based on AMD 300-series and 400-series chipsets. This promise was very close to being derailed suggests a community thread on MSI forums. According to MSI representatives active on the forum, the capacity of the SPI flash EEPROM chip that stores the motherboard UEFI firmware is woefully limited to cram in the AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.3a microcode on many of its motherboards.

The company had to make several changes to its UEFI BIOS package that's currently being circulated as a "beta," to accommodate support for 3rd generation Ryzen processors along with AGESA ComboAM4 1.0.0.3a. First, it had to kick out support for A-series and Athlon processors based on the 28 nm "Bristol Ridge" silicon. Second, it had to [and this is a big one], kick the RAID module, breaking SATA RAID on many of its motherboards. Third, it had to replace its feature-rich Click BIOS 5 setup program with a barebones "GSE Lite" Click BIOS program, which lacks many of the features of the original program, and comes with a dull, low-resolution UI. This program still includes some essential MSI-exclusive features such as A-XMP (which translates Intel XMP profiles to AMD-compatible settings), Smart Fan, and M-Flash.

https://www.techpowerup.com/257201/...ail-amds-zen2-backwards-compatibility-promise

That was from MSI, actually.

What does my video card have to do with this?

Nothing, directly.

 

[trents]

Good info, ED. Thanks. That thought actually crossed my mind but while they were eliminating things to accommodate more AEGESA code they apparently forgot to eliminate the line item that seems to give you the ability to choose between CSM and UEFI. So, the bios is misleading at that point.

They also eliminated the ability to store OC profiles in the bios with this latest release. Now you have to put them on a thumb drive.

You wouldn't think that putting a roomier bios chip on the motherboard would add much to the cost. But does a higher capacity chip necessarily mean a physically larger chip? If so, it could be a spacial problem with the mini-ITX board.


ED, how did you get onto the MSI community forum? I tried a number of time last night and this morning and get an error message: "Connection Problems - Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later."

 

[EarthDog]

Well, you have to remember that with B450, that chipset was out well before Zen 2 came out. And God only knows how many were made, shipped, and in the wild already with that same 16MB EEPROM. It is possible a 'rev x.x' SKU could be carved out with the larger capacity chip I suppose.

As far as size, AFAIK they are all the same (you can see boards with 32GB use the same socket - check..) . The problem is with the logistics of swapping them out, etc. But yeah, B450 board wasn't thinking about Zen 2 and the AGESA updates stuffing the smaller EEPROM.

EDIT: As far as your quick edit there RE: MSI forums, no idea... It's probably down if you are seeing that error...: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/forum-en.msi.com

EDIT2: It seems at least the german forum works...I didnt check others.. maybe it is just USA.

 

[trents]

Just got off the phone with MSI tech support. It was a great experience. I got a tech person (John) right away when I dialed the number. No waiting for hours listening to soothing music.

John confirmed what you said, ED, about the storage limitations of the 16mb EPROM being behind the change in the bios GUI. The new standard is 32mb and they have implemented that in revisions of the b450 series they term "Max".

John also confirmed that the MSI forum web site is having issues right now. He couldn't connect either.

 

[trents]

Update: Turns out the Rx 570 video card was the show stopper preventing me from booting using UEFI mode in bios. The "There is no GOP support detected in this card" was not incidental. I tried three other video cards, all Nvidia-based. The GTX 660 gave the same problem but the GT 710 and the GTX 1060 allowed booting when bios was set to UEFI mode. GPU-z says the Rx 580 does have GOP support, by the way. So the problem is buggy code in the new bios release that prevents it from recognizing the GOP in some modern cards. I reconnected with MSI via online form and shared with them what I had discovered.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

You wouldn't think that putting a roomier bios chip on the motherboard would add much to the cost. But does a higher capacity chip necessarily mean a physically larger chip? If so, it could be a spacial problem with the mini-ITX board.

The chip size won't change with memory size, here are 2 chip use by MB manufactures,
If your BIOS chip looks like this, it will be in a socket


But most MB's will have this chip and it is soldered to the MB.

 

[trents]

Yeah, I'm not planning to replace the bios chip but it does concern me that the latest MSI bios for this board family does not recognize many newer video cards as having GOP support when they actually do. It seems to be kind of hit or miss and if you don't have a card that plays with the GOP detection of the latest bios you can't run the bios in UEFI mode. UEFI mode has some advantages over legacy bios, one of which is better power management.

 

[Paraua]

I had same problem(MSI B550M PRO-VDH and Saphpire RX 580 8Gb Nitro+(after mining)). I flash my vBIOS with that below and problem was solved.
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/191898/sapphire-rx580-8192-170323

 

[trents]

Yes, that worked for me too. Sorry, but I forgot to follow up on my post when I found a solution.