Hi, In planning my new Gaming PC, I have considered either an E6750 or E8400 CPU. (Thanks for previuos advice). I have read that there may well be a need for a bios update on the motherboard i choose to support the CPU. But being this is my first time at building my own PC from scratch I wondered, If the Motherboard needed a BIOS update to support my choice of CPU, how can I update the Bios whilst I have an unsupported CPU in it or am I misunderstanding the meaning of "unsupported" in this context. Will the PC still boot up so I can update the BIOS if needed? Also, if I intend to use a DOS utility from a floppy to update Bios, should I do that before I install windows or does'nt it matter.
It's a bit of a tricky one. Typically if a CPU isn't supported until a BIOS flash you have to use an old socket 775 chip like a P4 to initiate the process, or ask to be sent a pre-flashed BIOS chip. However, many of the Gigabyte boards we recommend here, whilst not officially supporting the E8400 seem to have no problem picking them up. Despite this though, I would still recommend flashing the BIOS, especially since it'll be a lot easier to do so!
I have the E8200 and its not supposed to be supported on my motherboard until revision 10 or 11 (GA-P35C-DS3R), my board came with BIOS Version 6 on it and the CPU worked straight away. I will not be updating the BIOS as it seems extremely stable.
