XPS 8300 BIOS A06 or A07?

Hi Wangjo,

I am checking with the Engineering team. Once I get any updates I will let you know.

If you have further questions do reply to the same post.

I am also experiencing a similar issue with my Vostro 460 not recognizing a new HD 7750 graphics card. Any idea when we can expect A07? Or if it would help this issue as well?

Thanks,

Robin

Hi Wangjo and Robin,

I will be glad to help you. Request you to send me the system service tag through private message. I will provide it to the Engineering team. Then I can let you know what happens.

To send a private message, click on my name, select start conversation.

Thank you for the help!  I have sent you the information you requested.

Im also experiencing a similar thing with my XPS 8300 and a new PowerColor Radeon HD 7870 MYST Edition card. I upgraded my PSU to a 550w and it still wont boot. It would be nice to know if Dell is working on resolving this. If not then Ill have to RMA my PSU and card.

Thanks!

Andy

I ended up returning my HD 7750 because I did not want to wait weeks for Dell to respond (They have already been aware of this issue for months it seems). I got a HD 6670 instead (PCI-E 2.1) and it worked. I think it may be due to the PCI-E 2.0 slot on the motherboard and BIOS not recognizing PCI-E 3.0 cards.

So if you do not want to wait, perhaps you can get an equivalent powered PCIE-2.1/0 card.

Thanks for the update Robin. I've been doing a lot of research and I cant seem to figure out if its an issue with all PCI-E 3.0 cards or just specific ones. I will most likely be returning the one I bought.  

I've extracted my A07 bios from a recent Vostro 460 motherboard replacement. Thanks to bagerlk for his detailed instructions and use at your own risk. I'm curious to know if this bios recognizes with Ivy CPUs.

Download link:

skydrive.live.com/redir

I have flashed my XPS 8300 BIOS using the A07 file provided by nomad88. I can confirm that the flash was successful and that my PC is reporting an A07 BIOS revision installed. The date stamp of the A07 BIOS is 28/03/2012 which makes me think we will never see an official release by Dell as this is now over 1 year old. If they were going to make an official release they would have done it by now.

I haven't as yet tested whether Ivy Bridge is now supported but I will in the next few days and report back my findings. According to Intel, Ivy Bridge processors are backwards-compatible with the Sandy Bridge platform, but might require a system firmware update (here's hoping that A07 provides this).

To flash your XPS 8300 or Vostro 460 system with the A07 BIOS follow the below:

* Download the A06 BIOS from Dell's website here - downloads.dell.com/.../TR-A06_QS.EXE

* Run the file (it will tell you "The BIOS version is same or lower that current BIOS version" and won't actually perform the update) but before you close, open a Run command and type %TEMP%

* Look for a folder containing the file afuwinx64.exe and other files (my folder was called "_971B.tmp")

* Copy all the contents of this folder to a location such as C:\Dell_BIOS

* Close the A06 BIOS update screen

* Copy nomad88's A07.ROM to C:\Dell_BIOS

* Open a CMD window as Administrator and change directory to C:\Dell_BIOS

* If you are running 32bit Windows 7 or 8 run - afuwin.exe A07.ROM

* If you are running 64bit Windows 7 or 8 run - afuwinx64.exe A07.ROM

Once complete, your XPS 8300/Vostro 460 will be loaded with the latest A07 BIOS. Manually perform a reboot once flashing is complete.

I performed my BIOS flash using Windows 8 64bit. Thanks nomad88 for sharing your BIOS file, greatly appreciated.

Do you know if this will fix the video card issue people (including me) have?

I'm running Geforce 650 TI which is PCIe 3.0 on the A07 bios. No problems here. I got the card only after the motherboard change so I don't know if it would have worked on the A06 bios.

im not too sure. Try to contact the video card manufacturer. Power Color provided the new bios to new using my serial number on the card.

Ok I was able to test it out. The A07 installed successfully but my 7870 Myst was still not being detected and the system wouldnt post. Power color support sent me a non-uefi bios to flash the video card with. After I updated the video card bios on another PC, I installed it in my XPS 8300 and the system booted succesfully. So far everything looks good for me.

non-uefi bios?

Do you know if it will work with a different brand of vid card?  I got the A07 loaded on my machine, but it still didn't recognize my 7850....