Will F9J for GA-X38-DQ6 ever come out of Beta?

[Sammy]

Hi all!

I was checking the CPU compatibility list and saw that BIOS version F9J for the GA-X38-DQ6 is still Beta! Will this ever come out of Beta? This version is required for supporting Core 2 Quad Q9650. As I recall, I once tested the F9J, years ago, and it had some issues or flaws if you will. I pointed these out to Gigabyte, and I think they said they would look at it but did not promise me anything. So here I am in year 2013 and this BIOS is still Beta.

Excuse me my ignorance, but how does this really work? What does the BIOS development and support life cycle look like? They gradually develop and update the BIOS for a current model motherboard and they publish new versions as time goes by. Then! A newer model is released and all the work on the previous model is stopped? Is this right? Don't they even have slightest sense of respect for the customer or responsibility or whatever you wanna call it, to at least complete what they started?

Product support has to end at some point, I understand that. But the end needs to be clear and determined beforehand. You don't end it at random, in the middle of a development process. As if the whole team said "okay we've had enough of this" and jumped off a cliff. This is of course just my own opinion. The only point where this is legitimate thing to do is when the company suffers financial difficulties and all work is reduced or even stopped in case of bankruptcy.

For the record, I was using a lesser model Core 2 Duo and I am still using it today with F8 BIOS. It works like a charm. Now I found this Q9650 the other day which is not even unpacked, just something I purchased for another build that I didn't get to finish because I never got a motherboard for it. So I was thinking about upgrading my X38 with it but now I know I will need a new BIOS, a version that is still in Beta. I am screwed either way...

Will Q9650 work with F9J, even if it's Beta?... I am assuming it will, but I will be having an unstable BIOS. What about F8? Will it recognize it? Perhaps if it's a lower stepping? I would much rather prefer keeping F8 because it is the highest version available that is stable, never had any problems with it whatsoever.

Now, I don't expect Gigabyte to actually listen and finalize that BIOS version and get those bugs and glitches out of it. They have new motherboards to work on now. I just wanted to pour my heart out and share this with all you Gigabyte fans out there. Feel free to comment.

Cheers!

[autotech]

After all this time no it wont come out of beta. On my motherboard first bios came out in april of 2010 and last bios came out nov of 2010 but that is on my revision. They had three other revisons afterwards that the last one was supported for over 2 years.  It happens as newer revisions and products come out they quit updating the bios on older boards and each and every manufacture of motherboards does this. So it isnt just gigabute. DFI when they were around did the same thing and so does MSI, ASUS, Foxconn.

[ppinto]

It happens as newer revisions and products come out they quit updating the bios on older boards and each and every manufacture of motherboards does this. So it isnt just gigabute. DFI when they were around did the same thing and so does MSI, ASUS, Foxconn.

Sorry but not all manufacturers are the same when it comes to supporting their boards: I have an H77M-D3H which I bought earlier this year and which had 3 official BIOSes for 6 months after being released in early 2012 and 1 beta version 3 months later. There has been no official BIOS for one year now!

I have a problem with the latest official BIOS often not recognizing one of my HDDs (which my previous Asus board recognized everytime) and while the beta BIOS is somewhat better in that regard, it has serious stability problems (sometimes it doesn't accept/save any changes and you have to reflash to the official version overcome the problem). Given their record, I'm now hardly expecting any of these problems to ever be solved...

The comparable Asus H77 board had during the same period 11 official BIOSes (almost 4 times more) and 1 beta version, the last official BIOS having been released a month ago.

So Asus after 18 months is still releasing official BIOSes, 3 times longer than Gigabyte which stopped after 6 months, well before all problems had been sorted out!

Another thing regarding quality of service: the drivers supplied on the original CD have a huge problem with the graphics driver interfering on the sound output (distortion and squeaking whenever you move the mouse, open an application, etc): extremely annoying! So you have to look for drivers that work because the ones supplied on the manufacturer's CD do not work properly. Did they they even test them? They could hardly miss that problem!

Another sign of poor service: to solve the problem above, I uninstalled all the drivers from the CD and installed the ones available on the website. The USB3 driver refused to install, after many attempts, with the message "This computer does not meet the minimum requirement". I spent many hours researching this problem only to find out that the Sep/12 version of the Intel INF installer was a "Beta Engineering Build; not fully validated" and indeed does have that specific bug on double/update install, which was solved in the Oct/12 version, but Gigabyte hasn't bothered to update the version available on its website and is still causing problems like these to its customers, providing outdated drivers with known serious bugs.

Finally, EasyTune6 also has a lot of bugs, the most serious makes it crash every week or so, and there hasn't been a new version for 9 months now! Again, I'm hardly expecting these problems to ever be solved now...

So guess what: my next mobo is likely to be another Asus again, after this experience with Gigabyte's poor quality of service. Maybe they make too many different models and lack the resources to update BIOSes/drivers for all of them and should concentrate on providing better service on fewer models?