recently got the unlocked BIOS for Dell Inspiron 5576 by @Lost_N_BIOS and will post a review here as suggested by him:
-int graphics frame buffer size setting is not visible (nevermind i can mod and enable this myself)
-C1E setting in SB Misc Debug section has no effect whether disabled or enabled, AIDA64 always says C1E is enabled (not important to me)
-PCI Subsystem Settings in Advanced 2 tab cannot be opened (looking at the BIOS file with AMIBCP shows this one should be in Main section and some features it offer have no configurable settings. also not important to me)
-memory clock in Chipset Northbridge Configuration can be changed
-memory clear in Chipset Northbridge Configuration is also working
-all settings in Advanced CPU Configuration can take effect when changed
-SB Clock Spread Spectrum can be disabled in SB Misc Debug section. then CPU clocks are exactly 1.400 instead of e.g. 1.397
-haven’t messed with any exotic settings such as I2C,GPIO,UART,SPI so i can’t say anything about these
-booting off the internal SD card reader is not possible i think without updated BIOS modules from vendor and i haven’t tried this anymore
-booting SD card via USB1.1 card reader revealed one interesting thing: booting from 1GB Kingston card always worked fine (on restart/power on) but booting 16GB Sandisk card in this same USB1.1 reader usually does not work when powering on laptop and even the card is not detected in OS unless I replug this reader. But if I then restart laptop (not shutdown) it is detected in boot menu and can be booted. to end up messing with this booting thing i’ll just get a few USB3.0 card readers off the ebay or someplace as all ports in the laptop are USB3.0 capable
Anyway, thanks for this great work, even though i don’t need most of these settings, a few of them come in handy to change.
What I will try next is to replace VBIOS files for both GPU chips, I know it is easy for Polaris RX card but looks like will be struggle for APU Carrizo as there are literally no documentation. Main purpose of VBIOS replacement will be to raise TDP settings as I couldn’t find anything useful and easy that works (yet to try stapmlifier bot looks complicated) since i verified (as well as several other people with same CPU+GPU combo even in different machines like asus) there is an obvious power limiting resulting in core clocks drop to 2.2 and even 1.8GHz (noticeable when compiling software with all cores, and this was present from day one i got the laptop, just didn’t pay much attention to it).
Liquid metal is applied to both CPU and GPU (it took me 2-3 hours to do this carefully) and temps are about 60C max when playing UT3 deathmatch with 15 godlike bots at max video settings for hours…(i’m sure these would drop to 50-55C if i followed instructions and lifted laptop 10cm away from the table so the fans could take in cold air but i’ll leave that for another time)
And the one other problem that will remain is the BIOS flashing process, as it looks like impossible to flash BIOS from within windows or bootable dos USB. always get 18 - Error: Unable to start a Secure Flash session. original fw flashes fine this way with afugui. probably a goddamn RSA signature thing. Even tried to replace two backup bios files on HDD and use BIOS recovery to see if it will flash these - no go, as soon as aptio detects files without valid signature screen stays black and LED blinks 3xamber(or red whatever) and 4xwhite. When valid BIOS files are present in HDD recovery dir then it will open BIOS recovery screen, but i haven’t tried recovering these actually, only resetted settings once.
One more thing i discovered during my attempts to mod/repack BIOS-> AMIBCP looks like easy and useful tool, but it shouldnt be used to save final file, as it seems to screw up order of some NVRAM blocks, even though this probably doesn’t matter for system to boot its nicer to work with files when there are no unnecessary changes.