Ridiculous Gigabyte BIOS Support vs. Spectre / Meltdown

Update: I installed my new F9c BIOS...all went well up to the reboot where I was greeted with the message 'no operating system found".

So this BIOS update broke my RAID 0 setup. I just spent the last 5 hours setting up my RAID, resetting my BIOS as the XMP was set to default and my SATA ports were set to default. That is the hot swap feature was turned off. I had to re enable all 6 of them. Then reinstalling my OS/drivers and my basic software. I probably have a few more hours of software and games to do but I'll leave that for tomorrow.

winactive said:

You should always load setup defaults on updated BIOS then go and make your necessary changes.

It did that by default....that was the point of my "update" post.

A while ago Gigabyte sent me a F16K BIOS for my standard Ga-Z77X-UD5H rev 1.0 board to protect against Spectre. I've now updated to the F16K BIOS and all works fine in secure boot mode. I used the various Spectre vulnerability checking software and the PC is now protected against Spectre which it wasn't before the BIOS update.

Gigabyte still haven't posted the new BIOS on their web site but will supply it if you submit a support ticket.

I see there are more vulnerabilities to address New Speculative Execution Side-Channel Vunerability (Variant 4)

winactive said:

Perhaps if people post here we could share the zipped files (helps safeguard against errors).

I have a file for GA-B75M-D3V (F14c), GA-Z77-D3H (F12c) & GA-Z97P-D3 (F9d)

Here is the F16K BIOS update for my Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H rev 1.0 board.

Attachment 190334

camelia said:

Oh my! How can I contact Gigabyte Support? could you please share the link

I have a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 (rev. 1.0)

Thanks
Camelia

Hi, i have a full working modified bios Spectre free F9d for GA-X58-UD7 v1.0 for you but i need to know what processor have you got and help me in a little thing. Thanks.

Here is GA-Z77-D3H (rev 1.0) BIOS F23C (using 3570K cpu).

Z77D3H.zip

Bare in mind this update will reset settings to default, so remember to change back SATA to AHCI mode.

Eioneus said:

Hi, i have a full working modified bios Spectre free F9d for GA-X58-UD7 v1.0 for you but i need to know what processor have you got and help me in a little thing. Thanks.

Nop, if I install something it has to come from a verified vendor

Thank you
Came

hi all

Specifically joined this forum to thank & contribute to this thread, as it helped me update my BIOS to have Spectre protection.

Exactly as described, I contacted gigabyte support (I had to use their eSupport platform) and requested a new BIOS with the Spectre vulnerability patched. Within 24 hours I'd got a response - no quibble or debate. Just the new BIOS file.

I loaded default settings on the old BIOS, flashed through Q-flash (the inbuilt BIOS flash software). The new BIOS image just needed to be on a FAT formatted USB stick. I then rebooted and loaded defaults again.

BIOS stayed on AHCI.

I then just OC'd my CPU as previously.

System has been completely stable for several days. No indication of any BIOS issues or BSODs, etc.

I 'think' my system might be a touch slower but that's just subjective and could be down to other reasons and/or the Meltdown patch, which is apparently the slower version (I think it was found that certain file writing was slower after the Windows meltdown patch). My system could do with an OS refresh (inplace update using same OS) but can't be bothered at the moment.

Hope this info helps others (as the OP and contributors helped me).

Summary:

Intel 4670k @ 4Ghz

Gigabyte z87-D3HP

F8c bios

Win 7 64 bit Home Premium

Inspectre utility confirms I've now got Spectre protection.





Cheers,

Gary