Dragon Age™: The Veilguard: Update your AGESA as Master Wizard

Information here provided as-is without any responsibility. The main goal is to help experienced people to use the known path to update the BIOS, it’s only takes into account the successful scenario of updating the system. I will not provide any support in case of unsuccessful scenario.

You’ve been warned. Now, you can proceed.

Why do you need the fresh version of AGESA?
AGESA updates are crucial because they:

• Ensure Compatibility with newer CPUs and RAM modules.
• Improve Stability by fixing bugs and addressing hardware compatibility issues.
• Enhance Performance with optimizations for better CPU and memory handling.

So it MAY make your Dragon Age experience more smooth.

As an example, my PC configuration is the following:
B550 Aorus Elite V2
AMD Ryzen 7 5700x3D
GeForce 4070 SUPER
Kingston 32 GB DDR4 RAM

I see that lots of people with the similar PCs receive many errors and crashes that maybe could be avoided by updating to the newest version of AGESA. Therefore, it’s up to you to decide do you need to take the risk or find another way to optimize the game.

For GIGABYTE motherboards, the chances are, if your motherboard is older than 1-2 years, you don’t have required AGESA version. But don’t panic! You can go through this and become ludicrous elf. So prepare your tea and read this magic scroll of technical knowledge +1.

Because updating the BIOS is a risky step, you need to be sure, that you don’t have required AGESA version. In this guide, we will be updating GIGABYTE B550AORUS ELITE V2 Rev 1.2 motherboard.

The full process of updating will consist of 3 big steps:
1) First you need to gather sufficient information required for update (or to decide, do you need to update at all).
2) If you’ll decide to update, you need to prepare for it (like, USB with BIOS image and so on).
3) Update and post-update tweaks.

You may ask, how did I know revision? Good question! And very timey.

2) In this step, you need to find your motherboard revision. For GIGABYTE, you can find it on the motherboard itself. As far as I know, there are no ways to find revision from within Windows 11 (if you know how, please comment).
So, what you need to do is to check the side-panel of your PC, using lighter. With the front panel (where power button resides) on the right of you, the revision will be written in the bottom-left corner of the motherboard. Consider this photo:

As you can see, the revision states REV 1.2. Check yours now!

3) Now, you need to check your current BIOS version. In the same utility from step 1, you can check the “BIOS Version/Date” field:

So, from the current picture, we can see that mine firmware updated at 02 Sep 2024, but yours can be much older.

4) Now, when you know your motherboard model, revision, and current bios version, go to GIGABYTE official site and find your modeд in search (you need to enter only model and choose any revision of it, you can switch the revision later).
For example, consider this for my MB:

Now, go to Downloads and open “BIOS” container:

You will see the list of BIOS firmware starting from the newest one.
If you notice, on the right, you can see when new AGESA versions were added. Here you will need to compare your current BIOS version from step 3 to the table info, and find, is your BIOS version already introduced the AGESA 1.2.0.7 or not.
For example, initially my motherboard has BIOS version of 24 March 2023. If we check the update table according to my motherboard revision (this is important!), we will see that the required AGESA was introduced half a year previously at November 2022 (and therefore, my BIOS already up to date for the game requirements, but still I’ve updated it for this guide!).

5) Now, when you know for sure that you need to update (AND DECIDED TO TAKE A RISK TO UPDATE) you can start the preparation steps.

2) Now you will need to prepare a USB stick to write the update. Preferably, use 4GB flash stick, but if you don’t have one, it’s not a big problem. But be aware, that you will format your flash disk, therefore, there shouldn’t be any data prior to that step. If you have something on it, just copy-paste and backup it somewhere on your hard drive disk.

If you have 4GB flash stick:
a) Plug it to any USB Port. Go to “My PC”, find the device and press “Format”. Choose:
– “File system”: Fat32
– Check “Quick Format”
– Press Start

Now you can move the BIOS update file from the local disk to the newly formatted flash disk.

In case you don’t have a 4GB stick:
a) Go to “Search” and run “Create and format hard disk partitions”:

b) Find your FLASH device in the list, i.e. mine is the following:

c) This time click “Delete volume” (please, be warned it will remove everything currently stored on this stick! So prior to that, copy-paste and backup everything you need somewhere on another disk). Than click “New simple volume” on the stick again. Choose some amount of space (e.g. 32 000 MB or less), and most importantly, when it will ask, change file system in the drop down menu to FAT32. Now, after it will finish the formatting process, you can copy the BIOS update file to the flash drive.

3) Now, important step is to find out, in what port you should plug the USB stick for Q-Flash utility in BIOS to work correctly. Remember we checked the GIGABYTE website, and found the correct page for the BIOS update file in “Gather Information, Step 4”? Return to it but this time choose “Manual” section. Go to the language you prefer and download the manual file:

There you must find, which slot on the back of your motherboard is used for Q-Flash utility, for example for B550 Rev. 1.2 it is “f” USB 3.0 port:

How did I know? Because the manual states the following:

So it’s certainly what we are looking for.
For your motherboard it can be something else so please double-check before proceeding next.

Plug the Firmware update USB to the appropriate USB port on back panel, according to manual. Restart your PC and boot in UEFI screen (previously known as BIOS). This can be done by continuously pressing F2/DEL keys (may differ) on the loading screen, when your PC starts.

Before running the update utility, please, MEMORISE (write down) your current XMP profile. For example, it can be set to “Profile 1 CL-16-16-16-20”. Check your memory frequency, it can be like this:

In the settings, please, find the following button on the screen and press the hot-key accordingly:

There you’ll see the screen with invite to update. Next, from the drop down list, you must choose a device where you put your BIOS image (USB stick from preparation step) and proceed with update.

For example, here, you can see initial state of the update, where Q-Flash utility checks the firmware update and compare it to the current version:

After the update is done, the PC will restart. But you still need to return to the UEFI screen again (by pressing F2/DEL on startup), because after the firmware update, the bios setup will be refreshed and all the settings set to default. This doesn’t count TPM settings (it wont’ reset).

Return XMP Profile to initial state as you’ve memorised it previously. Make sure that CL of the memory is set correctly. Compare the memory frequency with the one you’ve had prior to update. Now, you can boot normally by saving changes (F10), restart and enjoy the so much needed update.