Recently I've purchased AMD FX 6300 CPU & Gigabyte GA 970A - DS3 mobo.
After reading that some folks had issues with cpu not being recognised on this board I was concerned that I'll have same issue. But no... I assembled cpu and mobo, installed win7 x64 and all went well, but in BIOS it says I have F1 version whilist F6 version supports AMD FX 6300 on this board.
So, am I missing something if I don't flash current BIOS to a newer version or it doesn't make any difference if all works just fine?
Also on current build I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS installed and 8 GB of DDR3, but in computer properties it states
"8 GB installed - 5,96 GB usable" how do I fix that?
Could it be because I'm using ancient ATI HD 4650 1 GB DDR2 gpu atm because I'm waiting for my beloved Sapphire 7870 GHz edition to arrive from the shop?
One school of thought is ( if its not broke dont fix it ) . Personally , Its the first thing i do . Flashing bios always has the chance of going wrong . So most people dont if they are not having any issues .
i go with if it works don't touch it, just think, you need a bios to update the bios, so if you mess up updating the bios you won't have a bios to reinstall the bios, say that 5 times fast, there's that but mostly i'm just lasy and don't care
though if you plan on a good amount of overclocking you might want to update, i wouldn't be surprised if there were individuals who went out of their way to find out what revisions are better or worse for overclocking potential
Gigabyte boards, yours included, come with dual bios. Flash away. If it fails just load up the back up.
"Permanent damage from power surge or failure during BIOS update, can be avoided with GIGABYTE DualBIOS, which automatically enables a secondary, back up BIOS." -manufacturer's page.
I don't plan to overclock because this board is not capable to do it in a safe way ( not causing fire department being called upon to cool it off)
I personally stick to a unwritten rule "if it's not broken don't fix it" , but considering that my win7 x64 Ultimate is not using full 8 GB of my RAM has led me to believe that something is broken, at least on software side, because on my other PC all 8 GB are usable with same OS installed.
I'll try to flash it, if it doesn't do any good I'll use backup Bios as suggested.
You can always try a small overclock with an undervolt. Not every overclock requires more voltage. It may actually run faster and cooler if you got a good silicon lottery and did this. Lastly I think there is a little switch near the battery to switch that makes it load the back up. Good Luck.