CPUs supported by later bios revisions

[APE992]

I'm about to drop the cash for a 3700+ San Diego and an a8n-sli deluxe and noticed the 3700+ wasn't supported until the 2nd to lastest bios revision. If I buy this board will it be able to boot with the cpu even if the bios is outdated?

 

[Zap]

Well, sometimes... sometimes not... sometimes kinda...

For instance. Chaintech VNF3-250 and 90nm Semprons... not officially supported except in latest BIOS but worked fine with older BIOSes even though it boots saying something about unknown CPU. I've seen boards that did have some oddities like always having to hit F1 to when machine POSTs because "invalid microcode" (seen that in some Asus boards such as P4S8X-MX and mobile CPUs). There are also some that may not POST at all - can't think of specific examples but I'm sure they are out there.

One thing is that if the CPU is of a similar family that works in the board, then there's a good chance it will work. For instance, if the board supported Venice core up to 3500+ and latest BIOS adds 3800+ support, the board will likely work fine with 3800+ on the older BIOS. Your choice of San Diego... I think 3700+ is slowest one so that's a tough one. Well, I think there's a good chance it can work if the board supports Venice.

 

[APE992]

The a8n-sli deluxe has awards bootblock for recovering from corrupt bios', which is just as good as not having a supported CPU. If I can use bootblock to flash the latest bios I'll be fine, if I can't I guess I'll be finding out where I can get a cheapo a64/sempron that is compatible with a return policy.

Also the venice cores (if my information is correct and ASUS is using the same info) one stepping is E3, and theres at least 4 cpus listed that use that stepping on asus' cpu supported list for it as of bios 1007. They currently have 1016 I believe for the board, russian roulette seems to be in my favor. Unlikely they would ship a board with such an old revision but at least the Venice is supported.