bios update warning

[wonkanoby]

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/in ... 81538.html


As the story goes, Nvidia has infringed a patent regarding to PCI prefetch that OPTi holds and although OPTi no longer makes PC chips, they now license intellectual property. The problem in this case is that Nvidia didn't come out on agreeable terms with OPTi and has to remove the PCI prefetch feature from its chipsets.

The problem with this is twofold. Firstly, it means that just about every single Nvidia chipset from the nForce 500-series and onwards is affected and as such, PCI prefetch has to be removed from all retail boards and every single BIOS upgrade that contains the PCI prefetch code has to be removed from the web. This also means that all Nvidia partners have to release BIOS updates for every single Nvidia motherboard from the nForce 500-series and onwards.

For the consumers, this means that they'll get very poor PCI performance, so if you're using any PCI cards in your Nvidia based motherboard, don't upgrade to the latest BIOS, as it will reduce the performance of the PCI bus. This isn't going to be popular with a lot of users out that that have already upgraded their BIOS, as this "feature" has already been implemented by some motherboard manufacturers going back a couple of months.

Furthermore, Nvidia will be asking for written confirmations from all its partners that older BIOS versions have been removed from their websites and that no BIOS versions with PCI prefetch will ever see the light of day outside of the companies again. All boards currently on sale must also have the BIOS changed, although this only seems to apply to the US market as of right now.

i checked the release notes for my 1.9 bios and really : -Disabled PCI Prefetch! so i flashed back my old bios version, im using a HD TV card, an X-FI and i dont want lowered performance, only because they dont want to pay for the patent.

it affects all nforce 500 series boards onwards, just to let you guys know, before you start to update your mobo bios.

[powerarmour]

Wow, thanks for the info Wonka...!

I 'think' I'm ok in the fact that I don't really use any PCI cards anymore, certainly not on my nForce boards, and the only one I do use is a dual DTV tuner in my Atom media center (Intel chipset). But yeah, bit of a b*****...

[nForcer]

I'm pretty sure this is old news - thanks for posting it though, Wonka.

Early 2007, OPTi filed patent infringements against quite a few companies including VIA and AMD, and they went on to successfully sue Apple too ($19M).

This is NVIDIA's B Del Rizzo reply from last year:

Nvidia forced to disable chipset PCI prefetch
Friday, 31 October 2008

Nvidia got back to us with a following comment. " This is old news from Jan 2007. NVIDIA implemented and distributed an SBIOS fix to disable the feature starting in Jan 2007, and disabled it in future hardware products that were introduced after this date. AMD is currently being sued by Opti on the exact same issue." but we still think that there is more to it.

Here's the ruling against NVIDIA:

OPTi gets $3.75M arbitration judgment against Nvidia
Monday, September 22, 2008

OPTi Inc. said Monday it received a $3.75 million judgment in arbitration over licensing payments by Nvidia Corp.

Palo Alto-based OPTi (OTCBB:OPTI) said an arbitrator ruled that Santa Clara-based Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) had continued to use OPTi’s pre-snoop technology for five quarters, and according to terms of a 2006 license agreement should pay OPTi $3.75 million plus pre-judgment interest.

OPTi said it is investigating whether Nvidia owes payments for other quarters.

The parties had entered into the license agreement as settlement of patent infringement claims that OPTi had brought against Nvidia. The license agreement provided that OPTi was to receive quarterly royalty payments of $750,000 commencing in February 2007 and continue as long as Nvidia continued to use OPTi's pre-snoop technology up to a maximum of 12 such payments.