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PSA: Gigabyte F20B BIOS changes

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Gigabyte Z390 Designare
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i9-9900KF
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UHD 630 & Radeon VII
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Hey all,
Just want to post about my experience with the new F20B BIOS. This Bios version was released for most of the SKylake/Z170 boards recently by Gigabyte. The BIOS adds support for Kaby Lake, but also does a pretty big overhaul of the UEFI and options as well. Generally this seems like a nice improvement but there are things to note...

I have tested the F20B versions for GA-Z170X-UD5 TH and GA-Z170X-Designare. They both have the same issues/improvements, but other boards may behave differently. First of all, the old bug where the BIOS would add extra UEFI boot entries every time it booted, for the same clover entry, flooding the BIOS with excessive boot options is now gone. It now correctly looks at the entry in EFI/BOOT and only sees this entry once. So that is good.

However in both my cases clover would NOT boot macOS at all until I checked/enabled both "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM" options in clover. This was not necessary in previous versions of the BIOS. If you do not enable these clover options, the boot will hang as soon as clover tries to load macOS (following the ++++++++++++++++++++++ in verbose readout). I don't see any downsides to having these options enabled but it does seem odd that it is required now when before it wasn't. This seems to be a CPUID issue or something related.

g\
 
I have updated as well, The custom fan curve is a great addition in the new bios version. However I didn't have to enable Patch APIC for MacOS to boot but I have been experiencing random reboots in deep sleep with PowerNap enabled, so hopefully the Patch APIC will fix them.
 
[QUOTE="TheOfficialGypsy, post: 1376661, member: 1401507"However I didn't have to enable Patch APIC for MacOS.[/QUOTE]
Interesting. I wonder where things are different between our setups. Do you mind posting your working EFI folder (without Patch APIC). I would like to test with it and see if i can get to the bottom of this.
g\
 
I have attached the EFI folder. I just put my system to sleep with power nap enabled and an hour later the system was on (no display on or usb) with code '55'. Once I pressed reboot it swapped to 'E3'. I have ERP enabled in bios and tested without with no luck. It was working perfectly on the F5 bios, however the fan curve is worth the upgrade. Could you send yours too?
 

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However in both my cases clover would NOT boot macOS at all until I checked/enabled both "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM" options in clover.

That is really odd, I have the exact same setup as you. I encountered no problems when updating my BIOS from F5 to F20b. The only thing that happened was that all of my BIOS settings got reset, but that was just a matter of enabling/disabling everything again. I was also able to get my XMP profile for my memory working with this update.

I've attached my EFI folder if anyone wants to take a look at it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gj2b6odv8z6irzp/EFI.zip?dl=0

Also, something worth mentioning is that I'm running Sierra 10.12.1 - I did a clean install of the OS. Upgrading from El Capitan did not work for me.
 
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waiting vs updating. The site isn't very clear what it updates other than Laby Lake and I plan to build a ral onw with the z270 next year.
 
I have a z170x-Gaming 6 and just updated to F20 - not sure just how closely related they are, but the version # jump is the same. My experience was - my EFI path entry for OSX was blown away. I had to boot into Windows and use EasyEFI to fix it - just had to create a new entry and point it to Clover's 64bit exec.
 
I've installed F20 bios on my Z170x Gamin 7. What a Nighmare.
Great set of features. But I couldn't ger my Nvidia GTX980 Ti driver loading as expaexted in sierra.
Back to version F8, The Nvidia driver loaded without any problem. Really strange.
So genzai, if you can talk with Gigabyte about this issue, that would be great.

Beware: Don't update to F20 if you have similar setup. I had to downgrade from F20 to F8 with fpt tool. and hex edit the bios file with my Intel Gb mac Address...what a pain //
 
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