Newest bios P6-2056sc or 2ABF 1.20

[HansL]

A friend of a friend bought a used pc and wanted to upgrade to a "newer" gpu, asus turbo gtx960 2gd5, and it keeps freezing during bios splash screen. 

I then wanted to ensure that the newest bios is installed, which according to the product page is 7.16 Rev A. 

This is released in august 2012, but during boot using the old gpu, i can see that the release date of the bios is from april month'ish, missing the Rev. A definition. HP support assistant doesn't show any new updates (running win10 though might be the reason why nothing shows up) and manually updating doesn't help.

Then through support assistant i can see that the motherboard is named 2ABF 1.20 and some searching shows that there exists newer bios versions than 7.16.

So which should i go for?

and where to get it?

thanks a bunch.

[old_geekster]

@HansL , welcome to the Community.

This is the latest BIOS released for the computer: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-pavilion-p6-2000-desktop-pc-series/515...

It was released on Aug. 14, 2012 for Win 7 and the specifications don't show that it will work with any other OS (Click on View All) next to Windows 7 (64-bit).

I don't believe that the GTX 960 will work with the motherboard.  It requires UEFI in the motherboard instead of a standard/Legacy BIOS: https://www.howtogeek.com/56958/HTG-EXPLAINS-HOW-UEFI-WILL-REPLACE-THE-BIOS/

HP didn't begin using UEFI until mid-October, 2012.  The computer was release Nov. 3, 2011.  You can check the BIOS mode in System Information.  The BIOS can't be upgraded to UEFI.

HP no longer provides software and driver updates for 10 year old computers.

Please click the Thumbs up + button if I have helped you and click Accept as Solution if your problem is solved.

[Prométhée]

hi

In theory only old graphics cards
AMD Radeon HD 6xxx cards, or a Nvidia GT (X) 6xx card
can be used
on condition of having the required power supply for the chosen model

you will not have a version of the bios allowing this card to work

[HansL]

Thanks for your input.

Additional search suggest that it should work with legacy bios as well, so it's simply just not supported with the newest bios version because they don't update it anymore - for obvious reasons, of course.

I did find a video of a guy showing some sort of a hack to make it work, but i didn't want to try it out. But people in the comment states that it work as well. just going to put it in here for others who dare try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkBTSlBW2oc&feature=youtu.be

[HansL]

Thanks a lot.

Is there a way to determine which cards would work based on any official information available?

[Prométhée]

indeed, I did not make the connection this time
but I have often given this link for this motherboard ..
Only not always easy to set up, and users have sometimes told me that it does not work ..
either it depends on the models, or the procedure, may not have been understood well, moreover, from memory, there are different possibilities (I did not watch the video again)

but it worked a lot of times

https://support.hp.com/lv-en/product/hp-pavilion-p6-2000-desktop-pc-series/5151865/model/5202137/pro...

otherwise, you have to look for models with the same motherboard, but you will only have a few old cards for example

[old_geekster]

@HansL, the last series of video cards not to require UEFI were the GTX 660/670's.  However, some of the cards have a switch to allow them to use a Legacy BIOS and UEFI.  I have spoken to most of the manufacturers' Tech Support many times about this subject.  It will be nice when we get to the point we only have UEFI in the motherboards.