Question Can I revert the BIOS back to the first version ?

[Lucaas_GTI]

Hello, I have a Gigabyte GA-H97-Gaming 3 and I have it on the latest BIOS version but I would like to go back to the first version to be able to do oc because oc was allowed in the first version as I understand it.
I went to the official website to see the bios versions and in the notes for version F6 it says that you cannot go back to earlier versions. I would like to know if someone can help me.

 

[helpstar]

which CPU do you have?
which hardware revision of the motherboard is it?

 

[Lucaas_GTI]

I have an i5-4690k and I don't know what the hardware revision of the motherboard is.

 

[Viking2121]

Im not sure about gigabyte, you should be able to download the old bios, stick it on a flash drive and try to update the bios like normal in the bios, and if it works it will update to the older bios, if not it'll complain and wont let you do it. As far as I know, you can downgrade the bios within windows.

Good Luck!

 

[BFG-9000]

Intel was really not happy ASUS figured out how to enable multiplier overclocking on non-Z boards for even non-K CPUs and how everyone else quickly copied them. So their 2015 era microcode was updated to prevent this from working, and of course one of the biggest updates for BIOSes is updated microcode as CPU errata are discovered and fixed, so you either get fixes or overclocks (plus note you can only boot from a NVMe disk with later BIOSes too). Worse, Intel told Microsoft this was a DEFCON 1 security emergency so ever since, WindowsUpdates will also push later microcode to Windows if it detects your BIOS is too old, and that will also disable overclocking.

If you want to revert to an older BIOS than is allowed using Gigabyte flash tools, then you will need to remove the soldered primary BIOS chip and use a chip programmer, or just buy a new BIOS chip from eBay and ask the seller to put the F3, F4 or F5 BIOS onto it. But it is up to you to either modify your Windows, or use an older unsupported Windows to overclock.

Or you could overclock the Intel-approved way by getting a Z97 motherboard to go with your K processor. Honestly though, you already have a BIOS that supports 5th gen Broadwell-H CPUs and one of those would be a much larger performance upgrade thanks to the extra 128MB L4 cache, even if you can't overclock it.

They are pretty competitive with up to 11th gen Intel on DDR4-3200, even with only DDR3-1600 since the extra cache makes up for that in games. This was when Intel was struggling to shrink below 14nm, with 5th gen being the first, and 11th gen the last one on 14nm eight years later. Your 11-year old 4th gen is 22nm.