Can a BIOS do this?

[Boris691]

i bought my new computer about a month ago and was quite pleased with my 9500 mad onion 3d benchmark. however i decided that downloading the newest bios would perhaps give me a good performance gain. however when i updated it my score went down about 800 points. with overclocking i used to be able to top 10000 and now i cant make it past 9200 with overclocking.
if i try to use the Asus update utility to put it back and try to intstall the old bios i get this warning.

warnning! The Date of BIOS image is later then current one, please flash the BIOS using
Asus dos utility if you still want to do this.

Does anyone know if the bios could be the problem and if so how to set it back?

 

[Harvey]

Yes, a newer BIOS can give you lower benchmarks. It depends on what was changed and why. Read the notes on Asus' site about what was updated. If whatever they fixed does not apply to you, you may want to go back to the earlier BIOS. For example, if the fix applies to a problem under Win2K, and you run Win98SE, you can safely go back.

The warning is exactly what it says. If you know you want to do it, the answer is obviously Yes.

 

[MasterHoss]

The general rule is not to flash the BIOS unless it's necessary. Having said that, the new BIOS you're running shouldn't hurt you performance wise. Bechmarks are benchmarks... 3DMark scores are known to swing up and down ... I really wouldn't worry about it unless you actually notice a performance hit during ACTUAL gameplay.