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    L521X A16 BIOS - What's new?

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by hanime, Jan 27, 2014.

  1. hanime

    hanime Notebook Evangelist

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    I can't seem to find what's new in this BIOS version. I am using BIOS A15 right now, but just curious as to what is new in this version. Anybody experience it first hand?
     
    hanime, Jan 27, 2014
    #1
  2. behem0th

    behem0th Newbie

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    According to Dell:
    - Enhanced HDD speed settings.
     
    behem0th, Feb 13, 2014
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  3. nesds

    nesds Newbie

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    In my experience, the only new thing was that all my sata sockets stopped supporting SATA3 mode and switched to SATA2 !
    that means in practice that all ssd drive start to operate with speeds around 260Mb/sec instead of 500+ Mb/sec.

    Awful! Disastereous and shameful action from Dell side! thanks god i found a15 firmware somewhere in Internet, because Dell hav pulled it off its site.

    If you still hesitating upon the question whether to install the update or not, DO NOT DO THAT WHATEVER HAPPENS
     
    nesds, Mar 26, 2014
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  4. gorpo59

    gorpo59 Newbie

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    Not sure but Dell have pushed me from A11 to A16 and my pc freezes every few minutes or hours (varies). I saw a comment from you regarding A11 and wonder if I should revert back? This only started when Dell replaced lcd and updated BIOS. I had NO problems for 2 years before that. Your thoughts appreciated. Have 32gb mSATA and 1tb HDD but also bought a 1tb mSATA thinking I could swap the 32gb and dump the IRST/caching.
     
    gorpo59, Jun 17, 2015
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  5. drummercoder

    drummercoder Newbie

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    Thank you guys for posting. It took me all day to find out what was causing my Dell XPS L521 SSD to only operate at 3gb/s. I was so mad after I installed my new Samsung EVO 1tb SSD when Samsung Magician showed my sequential read spead at only 250ish mb/s. Plus, I got a warning from Magician saying I was only at Sata 2. GRRRR!!

    Anyway, the culprit was just as you guys said - Bios update A16 totally screws up Sata3. I rolled back to A11; that was a mistake. OS would not boot past login.

    Luckily I keep a Windows Installation image on my USB drive. Copied A15 to my USB and flashed through the command prompt via the repair tool and boom, it works.

    Results:
    Boot time from dell logo to lock screen
    - A16: 11 seconds
    - A15: 4 seconds

    Thanks again!
     
    drummercoder, Nov 4, 2015
    #5