Aspire M3970 ipisb-vr rev1.01

Topgun350

Hi all!

 

I have a Acer aspire m3970 with ipisb-vr rev 1.01 current bios is P02-A2. it came with an i3 2120. since then i have put an i5 2400 in it. night and day difference! I have just gotten a i7 3770 and tried to put it in and i got 4 beebs. Put the i5 back in and it works perfect. upon reading I've discovered that i need to update my bios to P03-A3 to support ivy bridge, so i dowloaded the bios (ivy bridge with usb 3.0 support) from the acer drivers fro my comp and when i try to flash it from dos it says "File Size Does Not Match Existing BIOS Size" i have searced and searched for a manual for this MB but i have found nothing. How am i supposed to upgrade from sandy bridge to ivy bridge? ps you could originally buy these comps with i7's in them but they were probably 26- 2700's. Apparently this comp has the same board as a gateway DX 4860.

 

i have fround only this page http://www.findlaptopdriver.com/acer-ipisb-vr-rev-1-01/

 

Plus the 4 beebs normally means timing issue/bad ram but my i5 works fine

     G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4 x 4GB)     

     DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

• Timing 9-9-9-24
• Cas Latency 9
• Voltage 1.5V

 

 

 

sojo

Hi Topgun, I have a Gateway DX4860 it has the same motherboard " acer ipisb-vr rev 1.01 "  I have tried every which way to update the Bios, I tried updating to the PO3 A3 and put it on a usb flash drive and flashed it using windows , then booting to DOS and tried that. bot ways I got the same "File Size Does Not Match Existing BIOS Size" I tried the other Bios version  P11 A3 and got the same issue. I even tried using Windows 7 and 10, it made no difference.
Conclusion --- stay to sandy bridge processors the Intel H67 Express chipset wont support  ivy bridge without the bios update and I can see no resource for finding the right bios that the motherboard will like LOL
But, after reading up on the differences between Ivy and Sandy bridge processors, there is not much difference. 
IvyBridge is a 22nm version of Sandy Bridge, which uses 32nm process. By Intel tick-tock terminology, Sandy Bridge is a tock ( a new microarchitecture on 32nm) and Ivy Bridge is a tick (same microarchitecture on a smaller process technology . So basically, Ivy Bridge is same as Sandy Bridge, with small changes that improve performance and power consumption.
just stick to Sandy Bridge, its not worth the hassle and headaches to find a compatible bios witch I am 99% sure don't exist, this motherboard came out in 2011 and was used in Acer and Gateway PCs, resources and tech support for this model has long since dried up. the only real fix would be find a new main board that has updated bios and Ivy Bridge support.
comment back if you somehow found the right bios.....
best of luck!
Sojourn
 

billsey

Yeah, those BIOSes are for different motherboards. You can't mix the Ivy Bridge chipset with the Sandy Bridge, at least on these boards. The original poster could have used an i7 2600 or 2700.