[SOLVED] GPU for a Legacy BIOS Motherboard (HP Carmel)

[Denis Labrecque]

I am upgrading a 2011 HP Pavilion HPE that has a Carmel motherboard. Many people complain about adding a new graphics card to HP motherboards of that time, because they only supported Legacy BIOS, and not UEFI standard in today's GPUs.

I have looked into HP and American Megatrend drivers, but haven't found anything to upgrade my AMI 7 BIOS to higher. However, looking at the BIOS settings for the motherboard https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03102341 they say that "the Carmel motherboard uses an AMI BIOS version 7 that is compatible with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)." In practice, I'm not sure whether that makes the motherboard compatible with a new GPU, because the BIOS settings only allow checking for a BIOS or UEFI boot drive, with UEFI taking precedence. However, my Windows 10 machine marks the BIOS as "Legacy."

I have found this Radeon RX 570 RS on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077VX31F...olid=22TIBS9SH5N6L&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it Because it has a "Dual BIOS", will it work with either a Legacy BIOS or a UEFI motherboard? I'm confused, because such dual BIOS GPUs have been made for overclocking and mining, which wouldn't necessarily require that the other BIOS be legacy.

 

[King_V]

I'm hoping someone else will chime in, because I'm not 100% sure on this.

With my old Dell XPS 8300, I ran into that issue. I purchased an R9 285, and it wouldn't work on that system, because of the Dell's legacy BIOS, and the 285 I purchased didn't have a dual-BIOS switch. HOWEVER . . . other people had posted to Dell's forums about success with certain models of R9 285 cards, mentioning some that had a dual-BIOS switch that allowed it to work with legacy as well as UEFI.

I want to tentatively say that it should work, but I don't have personal experience with it.

If no one here can confirm, it might be worthwhile to contact XFX directly and see what they say.

And, if you purchase it and try, let us know the results here.

 

[Denis Labrecque]

I'm hoping someone else will chime in, because I'm not 100% sure on this.

With my old Dell XPS 8300, I ran into that issue. I purchased an R9 285, and it wouldn't work on that system, because of the Dell's legacy BIOS, and the 285 I purchased didn't have a dual-BIOS switch. HOWEVER . . . other people had posted to Dell's forums about success with certain models of R9 285 cards, mentioning some that had a dual-BIOS switch that allowed it to work with legacy as well as UEFI.

I want to tentatively say that it should work, but I don't have personal experience with it.

If no one here can confirm, it might be worthwhile to contact XFX directly and see what they say.

And, if you purchase it and try, let us know the results here.

What card did finally work for you?

 

[King_V]

I never wound up using a modern Radeon in that XPS 8300.

Since my son needed a PC to have at his mom's house, I stuck my previous card (an old Radeon HD 6670 card, later upgraded to an Nvidia GTX 660Ti) in it, and bought a new PC for myself, which allowed me to use the 285.

 

[Denis Labrecque]

I never wound up using a modern Radeon in that XPS 8300.

Since my son needed a PC to have at his mom's house, I stuck my previous card (an old Radeon HD 6670 card, later upgraded to an Nvidia GTX 660Ti) in it, and bought a new PC for myself, which allowed me to use the 285.

So the GTX 660Ti did work.

 

[King_V]

Oh, yeah, that's an older card, so it had no problem with that. I'm given to understand, from what I read in the Dell forums, that even the 10-series cards will work in the XPS 8300 despite its Legacy BIOS. Definitely the 9-series cards.

With AMD, it was mostly the R9 and later cards that would not work with it.

 

[Denis Labrecque]

I ended up finding a GTX 680 on eBay for $85 and using that. It's my first build experience ever; the setup has worked quite well, and the driver is up to date, which allowed the monitor to resize correctly (the screen edges were unused before the driver was installed).

Haven't performed in-depth testing, but Assassin's Creed Origins plays at about 35 fps when it's set to high quality at 1080p. With a new SSD coming in soon, the computer will be a lot snappier than it was when built in 2011.

 

[King_V]

Glad you found something to work with it. I do know that the Dell XPS 8300 which refused to work with my R9 285 is supposed to work without issue (assuming the latest BIOS is installed) with the Nvidia 900 and 1000 series cards, though I say that from what I read on the Dell forums, NOT from personal experience.

I couldn't say for sure whether this applies to HP's Carmel board or not. But it's something to consider if you ever think of giving the HP a more powerful GPU.