After a recent endeavor that went quite badly for me (I'm still trying to sort it) that could have been sorted by flashing my BIOS, I thought I would explain what it does, and why it's important for you to keep up to date with it.
Before I start, I should tell you that with most motherboards, flashing your bios has a small chance of bricking it.. most manufactures warranties cover this though as it's usually in the manual, but read it to make sure first.
BIOS stands for
Basic Input/Output System. Think of it as the operating system for your motherboard. It tells your motherboard what to do with all the bells and whistles that are fixed to it. (like the PCI slots, the CPU, the RAM, the GPU) and your OS interacts with it in order to make it all work. It's not just motherboards that have a BIOS either. Most of your cards and parts will have one. For example, your graphics card has one because it needs to know what clock speeds, memory speeds and timings to run at. All the BIOS files in the parts on your computer all interact to create the basic building blocks for Windows (or Linux/OSX ect) to work with. the BIOS on a mac isn't accessible and is unique in the way you can only install OSX on a mac because of the BIOS file.
Most motherboards come with the first revision of the BIOS file, meaning sometimes they are quite buggy and need some new code or revised code added to make them more stable and perform better. This is why it is worth updating BIOS files. For example: when I first got my old ASUS Maximus Extreme X38 motherboard, it didn't have support to use the latest 45nm Quad CPUs on the market, nor did it accept the fast brand of RAM that I owned. So I updated the BIOS for me to be able to use my good kit. Once I had, it worked but it was slow and buggy causing crashes and low performance compared to others with different motherboards. I waited a while and a newer BIOS file became available so I flashed again and it improved performance in games by around 10% +/-. It's not just the CPU and RAM that gets a boost either. The X48 and X38 north bridge motherboards for example. Most of them couldnt handle Quadfire out of the box due to a poor Base BIOS file released by Intel meaning any new X38 or X48 motherboard couldn't do what it was supposed to be able to do. Not only this, you couldn't have a RAID setup if you have dual Crossfire. After numerous updates, this was fixed but was poor. Now it works very well and performance in some respects is as good or better than X58/i7 setups.
So, check your motherboards manufacturers website for any BIOS updates that may be available. There is usually an update tutorial in either your manual or online, so find it and see if you are confident enough to do it. You will most likely see some increase in performance and stability. Just make sure to check your warranty first to make sure you're covered, if not you may break your warranty conditions. You have been warned that you may brick your motherboard, but it isn't that likely. I flash my motherboards BIOS a lot and I have never bricked one.
Think to yourself, I update windows and see a difference sometimes, why not my motherboard where it's more likely to see a performance increase?
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