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10000
December 30th, 2008 19:00
Video BIOS - when does it get updated?
I was sorting through my daughter's D830 heat problem and at one point upgraded both the System BIOS and the video card driver. Now, I used to work for Phoenix Technologies and think I understand System BIOS, POST, etc. When I hear that an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 135M Video BIOS will also be updated at the same time as the System BIOS I get curious. NVidia claims that the Video BIOS (alternatively) gets updated with a driver upgrade. However, if you scour the NVidia website you find very little info on what constitutes a Video BIOS.
Further, when I upgraded the NVidia 135M driver (as well as the system BIOS), the version that SandraSoft shows for the Video BIOS is dated in the year 2000, so I think it did not get updated.
So the question is - What is the Video BIOS, where can I get the latest version, install it, and see that I was successful? Or - should I just not sweat it? After the NVidia GPU fiasco I am paying attention.....
pup
7oby
193 Posts
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January 6th, 2009 09:00
The Video BIOS is embedded into the System BIOS and ships as part of it. This is different to desktops.
The Latitude D830 received the last Video BIOS update with the A13 BIOS version which you can check by looking at the release notes in Dells download section ("Updated Nvidia Video BIOS"). However A14 is the current BIOS version for the D830 and it's advised to install this one.
You can't easily patch or update the Video BIOS yourself. It contains customizations (e.g. regarding installed displays, power saving etc.) by the manufacturer of your notebook. The operating system video driver takes over most of the control about the graphics card. If you'r having graphical issues, try different operating system drivers for you graphics card. That's more likely than faulty Video BIOS versions.