AMD AGESA is a mess. Please allow us to flash back.

[yennic]

I have a X470-i with 5900X, it worked fine, never crashed once on me during a lot of stress testing using 4007 (AGESA 1.1.8.0). I was actually shocked at how stable it was. I then updated to 4204 (AGESA 1.2.0.0), nothing but problems since. Mainly, it's no longer stable on load (CBR20 is hit and miss to randomly reboot my machine, Prime95 hard locks immediately). Same with the release I'm on now, 4301 (1.2.0.1). AGESA 1.2.0.0 and newer has AmdSpiRomProtectDxE to prevent read/writes. I couldn't even take a backup my current BIOS using FlashRom.

I'd like to be able to flash to that older UEFI BIOS firmware that worked for me while AMD sorts out their AGESA bugs. I really need to go back to 4007.
I don't have an Asus Flash Back board not because I'm cheap or stupid, but because I own the only available mITX board when I bought it.

I blame these issues on AMD's AGESA because I pushed this system a lot harder on 4007 / 1.1.8.0 and never had a single issue. I started chronicling things that I've run into here. https://www.overclock.net/threads/asus-x470-i-with-ryzen-5900x-power-deviation-25-overreported.17774...

Troubleshooting: Deep CMOS reset, optimized defaults, multiple combos of BIOS options to resolve
GPU: GF1060 FE 6GB
CPU: RYZEN 5900X
Motherboard: Asus X470-i (running all stock settings except XMP / DDR4-3200, with Noctua D15)
BIOS Version: 4301 (AGESA ComboAM4v2 1.2.0.1)
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL14 Memory
PSU: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply
Operating System & Version: WINDOWS 10 PRO 19042.804
GPU Drivers: 461.72

[BuddyW]

yennic wrote:
A...

But yeah, much happier now, everything just works with my 11900K.. and I took benchmarks that I should share.. it ended up being faster in single threaded performance to my 5900X system and just barely behind in multithreaded.

At least your happy where you are. I've about got my B550m TUF Plus dialed in with a 3700X so it's smooth sailing here with SAM support and gen 4 for my 5700XT GPU.

But my MSI B450 board I had to back-flash from a Ryzen 3000 BIOS (where the 3700x was originally) to get to an AGESA that works (better) with a 1700 I had. MSI also locked the update so I couldn't just use their flasher to back-flash; I had to use AFUDOS utility with appropriate switches to force-flash it. But the difference, I suppose, was when I updated it to the 3000 BIOS MSI gave me some notices that it's a one-way move and no going back. Maybe ASUS should have made that clearer for your board.

So now I'm ready to upgrade my main system to a 5800X or 5900X when the time comes and push the 3700X down to the 'other system' where it will find a happy home. That's a got to be great upgrade value, hit two machines at once with one CPU upgrade. The only waste was the horrific B350 board that had to go in the first place so the 1700 could be clocked where it should be.

[yennic]

Asus did list at a point on one of the beta bios releases that there was no going back after a certain point. I think it was the 1.1.9.0 beta release (no longer posted). None of the current releases say "beware all who enter". I never actually saw the temporarily posted beta with the warning, someone else did and told me about it after it was too late. Given it was a beta release, and I only update to stable releases, I didn't even look at it the release notes. Unfortunate, for me, because there's a good chance I wouldn't have updated. I was planning on getting on the most recent stable, then letting AMD work on AGESA for a year or two, and skip ahead to the final AM4 Zen3 release. That was the plan at least.

After years of using AFUDOS and FlashROM to correct issues like I encountered here, I used those utilities on both my Asus and Biostar boards without issue.. I didn't expect them to block their usage in a time as tumultuous as Zen3's launch across two series of chipset. Terrible timing. But they're bananas on being worried about some X370 Crosshair 6 user hacking together a bios that works. They're all out of warranty by now, so I don't know what the concern is.. they clearly don't want to buy new boards and if they brick them, they'll have to.

I still like my Asus boards.. this Z590 wasn't cheap, but I don't mind paying more considering how much my PC gets used, and I have dual M.2 slots on the top of the board, which no one else offers.