Why dont all motherboards have dual bios?

TheBeastDragon · February 24, 2018

On 9/19/2017 at 10:01 PM, MageTank said:

That's still not his point. He used an A320 board as an example, to show it's not a feature limited to premium high-end boards on gigabyte. He is simply asking why such a feature is not commonly available on other boards if it's been implemented on a lower-tier board already.

As for the answer, it has very little to do with price. BIOS EEPROM's are cheap, costing anywhere from $2-$10 depending on size. You can even make your soldered EEPROM's socketed by unsoldering it from the board, and soldering an EEPROM socket for your bios chip size. Here is an example of Mr Fox doing it on one of his laptops:

Get yourself a TL866A programmer, and you will be able to fix any bios issues you have by just pulling the EEPROM out of the socket, and rewriting to it.

As for why they don't implement dual BIOS often on every board, the answer is relatively simple. It's a feature that is unlikely to be utilized by the vast majority of end-users. A lot of low end boards lack overclocking features (at least on Intel's side) and most people don't tinker around inside of the bios/update them. Manufacturers likely see it as a waste of time and resources to throw something on a board that will see very little use. A lot of high end overclocking boards do have these features, mostly because they are used more often on those kinds of boards. We are even seeing it on higher end graphics cards as well.

I know this is not the answer you are looking for @MyName13, as it is very unsatisfying, but that's basically the reason. Once overclocking becomes a standardized feature across all boards and CPU SKU's, it will probably see a much larger adoption on most boards. Until then, the market of dual-bios boards is likely going to remain the same.

Mr. Fox is a modder. This socketed bios holders arent cheap either. My recommendation would be keeping a programmer and a bios chip compatible to your system handy(spare). RMA would tak long time for little to none work amount.

MageTank · February 24, 2018

23 minutes ago, TheBeastDragon said:

Mr. Fox is a modder. This socketed bios holders arent cheap either. My recommendation would be keeping a programmer and a bios chip compatible to your system handy(spare). RMA would tak long time for little to none work amount.

Any particular reason you decided to Necro a 6 month old thread to tell me what I already knew? Or did you stumble upon this while searching for a similar topic? Also, cheap is a subjective term. You can get PLCC sockets for 40 cents, EEProms for 50 cents to $1, and the programming kits off amazon for $80. I referenced Mr. Fox because he listed his bill of materials on the NBR forums, and even suggested the exact kit he used to me. It's really not as costly as you make it out to be.