** Spectre/Meltdown BIOS removed by MSI ** (feedback)

Hello NotebookReview community,



As you may know already, MSI removed the latest BIOS from the official MSI website, for all the laptops models affected by this issue.

The new bios date is 11th January 2018, and why they did you may ask? well, Intel told manufacturers to do so, some folks have bsod with this bios.

Now, if you go to the official MSI website, they put a much older BIOS instead, for example for my GT72VRE 7RE, the bios avaliable right now is dated 8th November 2017, which is strange, since they released like 4 new BIOS after this one.

Yes, you cant rollback to the previous one now, since is not avaliable for download on the official MSI website anymore.

So, my questions are:
- is it 100% safe to rollback the bios on a laptop?
- do you agree with this nonsense, removing the new bios without any explanation?

Share your feedback about this new BIOS
- working fine? yes or no?
- are you afraid to try the new BIOS?

P.S
- https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=299778.0
- https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm

Cheers

 

Which version is the one before 310? I found 30F to be the one prior to 310.
http://download.msi.com/bos_exe/nb/E1785IMS.30F.zip

1. It's safe to rollback, it's just another BIOS which can be fully flashed onto the SPI chip.
2. This was ordered by Intel therefore all manufacturers (yes, everyone) had pulled the BIOS.
3. Some worked fine, some experienced slowness, some experienced BSOD.
4. There's no immediate threat as long as you follow best practice computing. So it's highly recommended not to proceed with the BIOS due to defective MCU until further notice.

 

In most cases, rolling back may cause instability to os, or maybe bsod it, nothing else. You're safe to rolback provided the bios you're rolling back to dosent have any issues with itself!

 

Revised Intel MCU (microcode update) is being tested and should be in production soon.

 

Do you know if it will be available for the 16L13?

 

Sorry, that I don't know and should be relayed to MSI tech support.

 

Thank you for your answer,

I dont remember the name of the previous bios, but it was released on january before the "spectre" bios, which was removed by MSI.

When do you think MSI will release a fixed bios?

Well, im always a little scared of these things, specially on a laptop.

I hope so, but MSI needs to give a reason to users when they remove bios without any explanation.

 

@Kevin@GenTechPC, thats exactly the bios released before the "spectre" one.

How do you found that link?

 

MSI doesn't really remove the old files from their server so you can hot link to the file if you know the file name and version number.

 

Thats pretty stupid, why on earth i can only see this old bios?



And this is not the first time msi does this, they remove stuff all of the sudden, and then they put old stuff back.

 

We will check with them to see if this is done intentionally or human error.

 

Thank you @Kevin@GenTechPC

 

So MSI GT72VR 6RE got the new SPECTRE bios, which is fixed.

I wonder when the 7RE model will receive this bios, @Kevin@GenTechPC, do you happen to know something?

 

Great!! *whispers*

 

Not great ! lol

For my laptop still is this old one

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GT72VR-7RE-Dominator-Pro

 

Newer product first, etc.

 

Exactly, my laptop is the newest model, 6RE is older, mine is 7RE.

I dont understand

 

Not sure why that one got released first but just wait for it.

 

You have older model version GT72VR. New is Gt73/75VR

 

Im talking about these GT72VR model only,

GT72VR 6RE = 7600HQ CPU

GT72VR 7RE = 7700HQ CPU

Yes, 6RE is the older version, and yet it received the new fixed BIOS first.

Great job MSI !

 

I fix it for you FYI. Intel released fixes for SKYLAKE aka 6700HQ first!! Should MSI wait with fixed bios for the Skylake models?

 

lol big fail by me, ok but you understood what i meant

Its late and im tired of all these bd prochot issue man, im tired...

Ok so Intel released first to skylake, ok, msi is not the one to blame this time

My bad!

 

As I said before... People need to do their Due dilligence. F. eks read my posts

 

ahahahah

 

On 24/02, microcode was released for production for Haswell as well p).
https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/02/microcode-update-guidance.pdf
If proven stable, it takes 5 minutes to put this into a BIOS, so MSI will release more BIOS early March I believe.

 

My concern with this updated microcode is the performance penalty on already underpowered laptop CPUs.

 

Do what @Papusan says. If you don't want throttling, don't buy filth. You buy jokebooks then you complain when they throttle? Don't buy BGAbooks. Only buy if you want light, cheap and disposable junk for doing homework at school without weight or space issue, that is the only purpose of filth !!!!

 

Extremetech did a test on the patch with before and after comparison.
https://www.extremetech.com/computi...take-performance-hit-spectre-meltdown-patches

 

More people should read my thread... How Dell cripple performance explained This ain't only a Dell problem.

CPU performance has decreased with Spectre protection:

• wPrime1024 (v1.55): 1% decrease (135s before, 136 now)
• Cinebench 15: about 0.5% decrease (1050 before, 1045 now)
• 3DMark Firestrike & Timespy GPU Performance: no change
• 3DMark Firestrike CPU Physics: 3% decrease (15224 before, 14750 now)
• 3DMark Timespy CPU Physics: 2.5% decrease (6181 before, 6024 now)
• F1 2015 Game Benchmark: no change, perhaps slight decrease, 0.5% decrease (177 before, 176 now - within margin of error)
• Dirt Rally Game Benchmark: 1% decrease (167 before, 165 now)

These were based off multiple runs (about 3 in most cases and compared to historical data)