There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the updated reference Maxwell BIOS -- there are several threads inquiring on this topic but many of them are confused as to what the necessity of the BIOS update or whether it applies to the ASUS cards at all.
Background: many Maxwell cards have had significant issues with output on the displayport connector, exhibiting a black screen in various situations: on initial boot, after restoring from sleep, etc. Different driver revisions appear to express the problem differently, and more recent releases solve the problem entirely for some people -- but not all. The thread on the nvidia forums describing the issue is here
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/777412/geforce-drivers/black-screen-on-windows-login-344-16... -- this link goes directly to the nvidia response, which indicates a two part solution to the problem: a new driver (344.80) and a new reference BIOS (84.04.31.00.00). The suggestion is that the driver *may* fix the problem alone, and if it does not that the new BIOS will be required.
In my case, I have an ASUS STRIX 970 connected to an ASUS ROG SWIFT -- so displayport is the only possible option for me. The problem occurs for me even with the latest driver or that specific hotfix driver, and the other suggested PCIe setting related hacks are not effective or applicable (I have a somewhat older motherboard, an ASUS P6T). If my system goes to sleep for long enough for the SWIFT to enter its sleep state (i.e. the ring light turns off), I can expect that when I bring the system out of sleep that the monitor will be indicating "no signal" and no amount of power cycling of the monitor, unplugging/replugging of the displayport cable, etc. will bring it back. A system reset is the only reliable way. Not to belabor the point: this is *really* inconvenient.
So, back to the BIOS. Running the ASUS gpu tweak software informs me that I have the latest BIOS for my card, which is:
Sep 19,2014 84.04.1F.00.2B
There appears to be some confusion (i.e. in this thread
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?54246-Asus-gtx-980-strix-new-vbios) as to whether this BIOS is actually newer than the one specified in the nvidia thread (84.04.31.00.00) -- the fact that the version number includes hexidecimal digits is perhaps part of the problem, maybe along with the fact that 1F in hex happens to be the same value as 31 in decimal. I will present two pieces of evidence that the currently shipping ASUS BIOS version is older than the version specified by nvidia.
First of all, the date. The nvidia post that advertises the newly available BIOS was in November 2014, but the ASUS BIOS was compiled much earlier than that, in September 2014. Second, let's look at the BIOS release history of a vendor with a more active policy of BIOS releases -- MSI in this case:
2014-09-10 84.04.1F.00.F1
2014-10-09 84.04.28.00.F1
2014-10-29 84.04.2F.00.F1
2014-11-19 84.04.31.00.F1
(This data is from the techpowerup database of BIOS:
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/index.php?architecture=&manufacturer=&model=GTX+970&interface=&me...)
Clearly there have been many releases of BIOS made available since September's 84.04.1F -- revision 84.04.28 in early October, 84.04.2F in late October, and finally 84.04.31 on the 19th of November: this is the revision that nvidia is referring to in their post about the resolution to the displayport problems.
I'm not demanding that ASUS match the frequency of firmware release of other manufacturers -- it's a point of competitive disadvantage, but I'm sure there's a cost to producing new releases and it's up to ASUS to determine what their policy is for this. But in this case, there is a firmware release that corrects a defect in the product that is causing real issues -- this forum already has several threads asking about BIOS releases and/or complaining about displayport issues: it is causing actual customers significant problems right now, including me.
Please, can we get a direct, non-evasive answer as to when we can expect an updated BIOS produced in November 2014 or later based on the 84.04.31 reference code for Maxwell-based ASUS graphics cards?
