G74SX BIOS v.204

[Clarkis117]

Months ago in a not too distant past... I was fighting with ASUS customer service over that fact they seemingly were ignoring the Intel Sandy Bridge Mobile Platform Specification Update, This Thing, which introduced AES-NI support and other things for various sandy bridge mobile CPUs. The 204 BIOS was supposed to address this issue but it never materialized on the Asus download site, but it materialized after numerous customer service requests, complaints, and phone calls. So, I have decided to release if myself, for everyone and anyone to use. I have been using it for well over 6 months now with no stability or performance issues to report.

This is the email that was sent to me with the 204 BIOS attached to it…
“Ask and ye shall receive. I was just passed the attached BIOS update for the G74SX about 10 minutes ago. I'm told it will enable AES-NI in the BIOS. You should take a minute to log back into the ROG forums to thank MarshallR@ASUS (do it via PM if you want) because from what I'm seeing in this email chain, he was pushing to get this BIOS revision made back in September, and was singularly responsible for it getting made. Scott Billings Asus Customer Loyalty Email: cl-scott@asus.com “

I installed it using easy flash in the BIOS menu, if you plan to update please use the easy flash guide stickyed in this forum. Make sure you are not having any power issues, battery fully charged, power supply plugged in and working, and no extraneous power grid issues before flashing your BIOS.

This is use at your own risk, I can’t make any guarantees. ASUS and I are not responsible for any bricked machines.

The 204 BIOS is downloadable from my SkyDrive, Here
Extract the file and follow the Easy Flash guide

Clarkis117

[homesickalien]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing!!

[XiiiX]

Does anyone confirm the veracity of this archive?

[Clarkis117]

Screen shot from BIOS menu

[Spook50]

What exactly does AES-NI gain you in a gaming rig? Mine is pretty much exclusively Photoshop, Premiere and some games. So I wonder if there's much (or anything?) to gain for users like myself with 2.04...

[hancor]

I downloaded and unzipped the 2.04 bios; using the EZ Flash method I updated the bios without incident as per Clarkis 117 instructions.

Bios upgrade to 2.04 was flawless.

Prior to the flash, installed 32GB of Corsair Vengeance 1600Mhz RAM, and had updated to Windows 10.

Now the G74Sx is running bios 204 and happily running Windows 10 after installing Intel Chipset software 10.1.2.10

The only thing not running under windows 10 is the Qualcomm Atheros Bluetooth, but that may need a driver update.

Hattip to Clarkis117 for the bios update!

[Pitcher1]

i can not find in ASUS support site by G74SX, where are you get BIOS 204?

[A_Guy]

It's not my habit to download a BIOS from some random guys personal website. I'm sort of security conscious that way. Is this BIOS available through official channels anywhere?

But I do like updates and anything that will unlock features of something I've already paid for sound terrific!

It is not yet available on the regular BIOS page for the G74
http://www.asus.com/ROG_ROG/G74SX/#support_Download_30

As for what it does...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_instruction_set

"Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Instruction Set (or the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) New Instructions (AES-NI)) is an extension to the x86 instruction set architecture for microprocessors from Intel and AMD proposed by Intel in March 2008.[1] The purpose of the instruction set is to improve the speed of applications performing encryption and decryption using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)."

So unless your software is written to take advantage of this, you'll get no change. Crypto IS a big deal, but where you'd see a large boost would be if you were doing some huge web communication sending lots and lots of data back and forth between you and some encrypted server (think httpS:// pages or SSL connections)

Or perhaps avoiding No Such Agency?

[Clarkis117]

I have no idea why this wasn't available from the Asus support site... I fought with Asus customer service for 3 months over it because I needed AES-NI for Cryptography work in College. That's one of the reasons I purchased a high-end Sandy Bridge laptop at the time, though I was thoroughly pissed off when I found out that Asus wasn't supporting the Intel Platform specifications. The response I was getting from Asus Customer service, at the time, was basically telling me the laptop I had just bought was a piece of **** abandonware, that nobody could give two rat's asses to support it. It was made in February 2012 and I bought it in March 2012. The Intel platform specification update that gave some Sandy Bridge mobile CPUs official support for AES-NI was issued sometime in 2011. This lack of support caused quite a bit of here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/582628-aes-ni-support-truecrypt-sandy-bridge-pro..., and is likely where the 204 BIOS update came from. I bet ASUS customer service just sent it to me, to shut me up. This still pisses me off though, that there has not been an official update for it. I do not think I will be buying another Asus G-series laptop if support ends months after I buy it, especially because they are not CHEAP($1.5k)!

[A_Guy]

Abit released the source code to the BIOS of one of the motherboards I bought from them. They may have done more or that may have been a unique occurrence, I don't know, but I sure took advantage of it.

Although I never made a modification myself, when others did, you could compare the old and new files and verify that the changes were localised to one function.

It would be terrific if ASUS would do the same.