My computer is two years old. I ordered it installed with XP32. Back in January I upgraded to VISTA64. My BIOS are at 608. Latest BIOS are at 1403. Would you install the latest BIOS? Would this help increase performance in FSX? Or, are BIOS updates just fixes for minor technical inconveniences? I'm trying to better wrap my head around whether I should update or not. I know there are certain risks. If I do update and it causes problems, I don't know how and if you could revert back to a previously installed version. Your thoughts are appreciated ...

BIOS releases are unlikely to affect performance, in the rare exception that they actually decrease performance as was the case with the TLB patch for the first Phenom chips which disabled the TLB, effectively reducing performance by around 20%. If you are not experiencing hardware issues then it is unlikely you need to update your BIOS.

BIOS releases are unlikely to affect performance, in the rare exception that they actually decrease performance as was the case with the TLB patch for the first Phenom chips which disabled the TLB, effectively reducing performance by around 20%. If you are not experiencing hardware issues then it is unlikely you need to update your BIOS.

Correct unless you have it overclocked and the bios includes updated or new overclocking features or main CPU Updates.

Thanks guys ...I am having a technical issue, whether it's hardware or software related, I can't seem to figure out. My first suspicion is hardware. Once or twice a week, on initial boot-up, my monitor light just blinks indicating no signal. After hitting the reset button, the monitor starts up fine. But my computer's time and date has changed itself to December 31, 2006, 11PM. I have checked for viruses, I'm clean. It's not the battery, I had it checked and it's good. This has been an ongoing issue since last Christmas.About two months ago, I couldn't get my computer to start. I had to take it to a tech who found after running memorytest86 that my #3 memory slot was the cause. Once the stick was pulled out, the computer started and ran just fine. The stick itself was ok too. The tech suggested I replace my motherboard. I just thought updating the BIOS might be a shot in the dark cure.I"m running FSX somewhat well with 5GB of memory. A have a matching pair of 2GB DDR2 800 Crucial Ballistix in the first two slots, and a 1GB stick of Buffalo in the fourth. The third as I mentioned is empty.Guess I'll leave the BIOS alone. And from what I understand now, a OS change or upgrade has no affect on BIOS.

BIOS releases are unlikely to affect performance, in the rare exception that they actually decrease performance as was the case with the TLB patch for the first Phenom chips which disabled the TLB, effectively reducing performance by around 20%. If you are not experiencing hardware issues then it is unlikely you need to update your BIOS.

Thanks guys ...I am having a technical issue, whether it's hardware or software related, I can't seem to figure out. My first suspicion is hardware. Once or twice a week, on initial boot-up, my monitor light just blinks indicating no signal. After hitting the reset button, the monitor starts up fine. But my computer's time and date has changed itself to December 31, 2006, 11PM. I have checked for viruses, I'm clean. It's not the battery, I had it checked and it's good. This has been an ongoing issue since last Christmas.About two months ago, I couldn't get my computer to start. I had to take it to a tech who found after running memorytest86 that my #3 memory slot was the cause. Once the stick was pulled out, the computer started and ran just fine. The stick itself was ok too. The tech suggested I replace my motherboard. I just thought updating the BIOS might be a shot in the dark cure.I"m running FSX somewhat well with 5GB of memory. A have a matching pair of 2GB DDR2 800 Crucial Ballistix in the first two slots, and a 1GB stick of Buffalo in the fourth. The third as I mentioned is empty.Guess I'll leave the BIOS alone. And from what I understand now, a OS change or upgrade has no affect on BIOS.

A shot in the dark here, but you might want to check that your motherboard supports 5Gb of RAM in the configuration you have described. Two things sound a little unusual: first, you have installed sticks in 3 out of 4 slots; and secondly, not all sticks are the same - which might mean they have different timings (CAS settings and the like). Please note, I'm not telling you this is wrong: just that it might be worth looking into. You would need to study the manual quite closely to find out, if it's as badly written as most of them. But in my experience, you can't always just put memory sticks wherever you like without affecting either (i) stability or (ii) performance. For example, even if your PC boots with an unsupported RAM configuration, you might find that you've triggered it to operate in single channel rather than double channel mode - which might have quite a severe effect on performance especially for FSX. I suppose you could try removing the 1GB stick of Buffalo RAM to test this possibility. If that doesn't work, try moving the 2GB stick presently in Slot 2, into Slot 3: ie, populate Slots 1 and 3 leaving 2 and 4 empty. If that doesn't, work try populating Slots 2 and 4 and leave 1 and 3 empty. Only do this AFTER reading the manual carefully to be sure that you're not violating any rule specific to your motherboard.And personally I wouldn't be too afraid of upgrading the BIOS to see if it helps. Just try to avoid using the Windows-based upgrade utilities that are sometimes packaged with the motherboard. These are not always successful. Instead, find out how to perform the upgrade from within the BIOS itself, without using ANY operating system; or, if that fails, try to upgrade from DOS.Tim

A shot in the dark here, but you might want to check that your motherboard supports 5Gb of RAM in the configuration you have described. Two things sound a little unusual: first, you have installed sticks in 3 out of 4 slots; and secondly, not all sticks are the same - which might mean they have different timings (CAS settings and the like). Please note, I'm not telling you this is wrong: just that it might be worth looking into. You would need to study the manual quite closely to find out, if it's as badly written as most of them. But in my experience, you can't always just put memory sticks wherever you like without affecting either (i) stability or (ii) performance. For example, even if your PC boots with an unsupported RAM configuration, you might find that you've triggered it to operate in single channel rather than double channel mode - which might have quite a severe effect on performance especially for FSX. I suppose you could try removing the 1GB stick of Buffalo RAM to test this possibility. If that doesn't work, try moving the 2GB stick presently in Slot 2, into Slot 3: ie, populate Slots 1 and 3 leaving 2 and 4 empty. If that doesn't, work try populating Slots 2 and 4 and leave 1 and 3 empty. Only do this AFTER reading the manual carefully to be sure that you're not violating any rule specific to your motherboard.And personally I wouldn't be too afraid of upgrading the BIOS to see if it helps. Just try to avoid using the Windows-based upgrade utilities that are sometimes packaged with the motherboard. These are not always successful. Instead, find out how to perform the upgrade from within the I originally had 4x1GB of Buffalo. I wasn't happy with BIOS itself, without using ANY operating system; or, if that fails, try to upgrade from DOS.Tim[/quoteTim, thanks for your suggestions.As far as I've been able to tell from reading the ASUS manual and other forums, I need to have my identical pair of Ballistix 2GB DDR2 in the first two slots of my P5N-E-SLI board to take full advantage of dual channel memory. So splitting them up into various slots could be a setback if I'm understanding this all correctly.My board can hold 8GB max. As odd as 5GB may seem, I haven't seen any loss in performance with the extra 1GB of Buffalo ram in slot 4. The timing is the same as the 2x2GB Ballistix. I'm just figuring more is better in the case of Vista and FSX, so why not make use of an extra stick. Regarding slot 3, if I pop any stick in it, that's when I start getting memory errors. That's telling me my board might be having a circuit problem. But I could be wrong. Otherwise, my system seems fairly stable. All except for the annoying monitor and date and time problem I mentioned in my first post.