NewsDell Inspiron 530 BIOS Updated
Dell has issued a critical BIOS update for the Dell Inspiron 530 series. BIOS Update 1.0.12 adds new Intel processor support as well as updated Intel microcode.
But, much more importantly, it fixes a buggy memory map for systems with 4 GB of memory or more installed. Considering I have 4 GB of memory in my system, I was affected by this… but not greatly, as my 530 is using Vista 32-bit and only addresses the 4 GB during POST.
Anyways, 4 GB of RAM or not, all Inspiron 530 owners should head on over to Dell.com and get updated.
It would also be nice if they would open the BIOS up to change the CPU multiplier. At a minimum please set it to 9 (the default for Q6600 at 2.4GHz) instead of the locked 5 the system ships with. This essentially throttles the chip down to 1.5GHz.
Info on this comes from applying CPU-ID.
Dell always locks CPU multiplier on their consumer motherboards. Originally they did this to please Intel, but now they do it to promote their prosumer XPS line (which has the multiplier unlocked).
Thanks for the info (via Google). We got a 530 about a month ago shipped with 1.0.7 and it had boot issues - we’ll see if this fixes it.