How Well Is Gigabyte's Motherboard Support History? Is My Z490 Board Likely To Get Any More BIOS Upgrades?

[Cyber Akuma]

I have a Gigabyte Z490 AORUS PRO AX motherboard, and the BIOS hasn't been updated in a while. Thing is, the latest BIOS updates added better support for Windows 11.... and fixed some "major vulnerabilities" that they highly recommend you update. 
 
My issue is... that update also claims it changes the way the BIOS itself is written and once I update to it, I can no longer downgrade to any previous version. 
 
That specific part is what worries me, since both the 10th gen and 11th gen Intel CPUs were rather lackluster, and now that 12th gen has been released and is doing well, I worry that Z590 and especially Z490 boards are just going to be ignored from now on, and mine ended up with the most recent BIOS both being a recommended onw for Windows 11 support and to fix security issues.... while also being one I can't downgrade from in case it gives me issues. 
 
If Gigabyte continues to update this board I wouldn't be as worried, but my main concern is due to it being a 10th gen chipset and 12th gen being out now and how lackluster 10th and 11th gen were, that these boards will be ignored now and not get further upgrades. Anyone have any experience with how well or poorly Gigabyte tends to support older motherboards?

[jaslion]

It's totally normal that a board at the end of it's life (aka when new cpu releases stop) will never get an update again. Thats basically been the norm for multiple decades since it's a case of it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

This was probably the last update and I don't see a problem here as long as it works well.

[Cyber Akuma]

Just now, jaslion said:

and I don't see a problem here as long as it works well.

That is the part I am worried about. If it doesn't work well I can't downgrade to an older BIOS.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, Cyber Akuma said:

That is the part I am worried about. If it doesn't work well I can't downgrade to an older BIOS.

Is there a problem right now?

 

If no: leave it

 

If yes: upgrade it and hope for the best

 

Best you can do is research and from what I found all is good.

[Mister Woof]

Can't say for certain on all boards, but the boards in my household:

 

Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5

Most recent BIOS 11/29/21

Notes:

1. Checksum : F3C5
2. Major vulnerabilities updates, customers are strongly encouraged to update to this release at the earliest.
   Credits to "Assaf Carlsbad and Itai Liba from SentinelOne"
3. Introduce capsule BIOS support starting this version.
   Customers will NOT be able to reverse to previous BIOS version due to major vulnerabilities concerns.
4. Enable Resizable Base-Address Register (Resizable-BAR) option to enhance GPU performance. (1/19/21)

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z370-AORUS-Gaming-5-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

 

Gigabyte Z390M Gaming

Most recent BIOS 11/29/21

Notes:

1. Checksum : 1F0E
2. Major vulnerabilities updates, customers are strongly encouraged to update to this release at the earliest.
   Credits to "Assaf Carlsbad and Itai Liba from SentinelOne"
3. Introduce capsule BIOS support starting this version.
   Customers will NOT be able to reverse to previous BIOS version due to major vulnerabilities concerns.
4. Enable Resizable Base-Address Register (Resizable-BAR) option to enhance GPU performance (1/19/21)

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-M-GAMING-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

 

Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Elite AX

Most recent BIOS 11/9/21

Notes:

1. Checksum : 63D6
2. Major vulnerabilities updates, customers are strongly encouraged to update to this release at the earliest.
   Credits to "Assaf Carlsbad and Itai Liba from SentinelOne"
3. Introduce capsule BIOS support starting this version.
   Customers will NOT be able to reverse to previous BIOS version due to major vulnerabilities concerns.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z590-AORUS-ELITE-AX-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

 

Was surprised to see REBAR added to the Z370/Z390 tbh. Keep in mind the Z370 is quite old at this point; going on 5 years.

 

These updates are just a few months ago.

[Heliian]

My 300 series board got a bios update in November for win11 support. 

 

Don't need either

 

I've learned my lesson many times now and don't update unless absolutely necessary.  

[porina]

I vowed never to buy another high end Gigabyte mobo again as their bios support sucks, and has sucked through multiple generations going back to Z97. Last problem I had was trying to run Rocket Lake on Z490, it was unstable and they were no help. After releasing a bios supporting the CPU generation they didn't update it again for a long time. The microcode was already out of date when they released that. I do see they released two more versions since I gave up, one to enable support for Win11 by default, and another to patch vulnerabilities. Don't know if either would update Rocket Lake support but at over 6 months after it matters, it would be way too late even if so. Moved to an Asus board and no problems since.

[Cyber Akuma]

Yeah, that's another thing. Apparently a LOT of Gigabyte boards some many years old all got updates at once for that same vulnerability. Just about all of them switched to some new "capsule" style BIOS (whatever that is) that doesn't let you downgrade to an older version too, apparently that had a part in patching the vulnerability.