Why should you upgrade your BIOS?

Question

Why would you need to flash your BIOS on Dell computer? What are you benefiting other just upgrading for the sake of doing it?

Answer 1

The four most common reasons to flash the BIOS would be:



1) To add further processor support (Newer CPUs that use the same socket as older boards might not be recognized otherwise. A perfect example would be the 45nm LGA775 chips)



2) The BIOS has been corrupted and needs to be repaired.



3) To fix a serious problem with the previous BIOS version. The happens mostly with new-model boards.



4) The manufacturer has added support for some new hardware or feature. New BIOS is needed for it to function.



If your computer is working fine as-is and you don't plan on upgrading it any time soon, there is no reason to flash the BIOS.

Answer 2

Why is this important. In the past, you would either replace the motherboard or at least the BIOS chip if you needed to upgrade the basic system programming. Now, it can be done with a simple software upgrade that erases the existing BIOS code and then writes a new code to the BIOS EPROM chip. This process of erasing and writing new code is called "FLASHING." The Flash Bios often allows a motherboard manufacturer to add features to a BIOS for hardware and settings they did not consider when the motherboard was manufactured, such as larger hard drives, faster CPUs, even specialty devices like ZIP drives. A Flash Bios can even be offered to correct errors in the code of the original BIOS, called BUGS.



http://freepctech.com/pc/001/006.shtml

Answer 3

You should NEVER upgrade your bios just for hell of it. BIOSes are not like normal programs - they are built onto chips that are intended to not be written to except when absolutely neccesary.



By "absolutely neccesary" I mean that the current BIOS is flat out preventing your computer from working properly, such as the CPU or an important piece of hardware not being recognized.



Basically, if you're computer can boot then you don't need a BIOS upgrade.

Answer 4

An update to the BIOS can improve performance and all manor of other things your laptop does. If dell are suggesting you do it then I probably would. Companies don't tend to update BIOS's that often. usually when there is an issue they have fixed much like updates from MAC and Windows.



However flashing a BIOS can be tricky if you don't know what your doing. If they recommend doing it within the the os my advice is leave it and don't upgrade.

Answer 5

Support for new processors for example, stability, improvements in accessing hardware, et cetera.