AMI bios dumps differences

Hi, I’m getting ready to update some modules inside my H97M-E motherboard, so first of all I’ve dumped my current bios with multiple different tools:

- (UBBT) Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit 2.0
- AFUWINGUIx64 3.07.01
- Flashrom (“Winbond 25Q64FVAIQ 1536” chip removed and connected directly to my Raspberry PI)

Download this archive with all the dumps: https://www.mediafire.com/?3oohbm746p8az18
Every dump is 8,388,608 bytes - 8,00 MB.

Btw, as you see, the Flashrom dump is more “complete”, there are more “FF” fields inside the AFU dump and even more in the UBBT (Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit) dump. I would like to know what the other dumps are missing and possibly why. Thank you for your time :smiley:

P.s. do you guys know where I could get more Winbond 25Q64FVAIQ chips?

You have a desktop motherboard, there is no need to use your dump. Download the latest BIOS from ASUS and work on that.

The only proper dump is the one from the Raspberry, the other two are either incomplete or corrupt. Don’t use UBBT as it’s ancient and doesn’t work with anything modern. Don’t use AFU as it tends to dump chip contents without caring if some regions are locked, and thus inaccessible, leading to incomplete SPI images. For raw dumping/flashing prefer the Intel Flash Image Tool found at the ME System Tool packages.

ASUS locks the Flash Descriptor so, without a programmer, you can only work on the BIOS region. If you are not interested in updating the ME then just use UBU on the latest ASUS bios and flash it via the BIOS menu. If you want to update the ME manually via the SPI/BIOS image then you will have to use the programmer. Otherwise, update just the BIOS and use FWUpdate later on as you probably have already done based on the latest firmware found at your one working dump compared to ASUS stock SPI/BIOS.

Yep the descriptor is locked, Intel Flash Image Tool does not work, the ME region is dumped correctly only by the flashrom-method, UBU can read the ME region properly only from that dump. Thank you for the fast reply.


Also that’s true :smiley:

Btw, some other questions:

I would like to update Intel RST OROM/EFI SataDriver and Intel microcode, are there some known compatibility issue? I’ve a Xeon E3-1231 v3 cpu, is there any possibility that "downgrading" my current haswell microcode from 19 (marked as "Best overclocking" inside UBU) to 7 (marked as "Last for non-K overclocking") could allow me to change the BCLK or the cpu ratio? I know that I’ve an H97 chipset, but I’m talking about this old article: https://www.techpowerup.com/202196/asus-enables-overclocking-on-h97-h87-b85-and-h81-series-motherboards

For both RST v15 compatibility and Xeon + 07 microcode, you need to ask Fernando and SoniX respectively at the UBU Discussion Thread.