Hello all.
I suddenly noticed small hangups/freezes while using my Asus Sabertooth X79 MB and I just want to rule things I’ve done out.
The backup firmware file I took reports a FW version of 7.1.20.1119. I updated the firmware to 7.1.80.1214 and installed v11.0.0.1167. Was that correct?
Thanks
Although the problem you are facing is probably not ME-related, what you did was correct. You now have the latest ME7 1.5MB firmware & drivers.
Well last night things became a bit more interesting. I used UBU to look at the latest bios for my motherboard available from ASUS and noticed it showed v8.x
I figured I mistakenly installed ME 7.x for series 6 thinking it should correspond to X79. I decided the best way to make sure that I was using the correct version was to just reload the bios entirely. I used USB flashback and when the system came back up sure enough I had ME v8.1.x showing in the bios.
So why the heck did my OLD.BIN file show it was v7.x?
Anyways I haven’t had time to use the machine today but I’m hoping what is installed now is the correct firmware version to upgrade from.
The X79 is 6-series which originally came with ME7. However, in order to support Ivy Bridge cpus some desktop 6-series systems were upgraded from ME7 to ME8 (which is by default at 7-series systems). You obviously had an old BIOS with ME7 whereas ASUS updated the board to ME8 down the line.
To upgrade to ME8, flash the latest BIOS from ASUS which should have ME8 inside (use ME Analyzer to verify that, also included at UBU). Afterwards, you can flash manually to the latest ME8 1.5MB firmware which is v8.1.65.1586 using the FWUpdate v8 tool.
You’ve been absolutely great. I appreciate your helpfulness tremendously. Kudos to you and everyone who has made this site so amazing.
I’m still surprised that I had ME7 before last night since I had updated to this exact bios version before. It’s been the latest offered by Asus for my board since last year. Oh well. Thank you again for your explanation as it has clarified my confusion!