Modder uses Claude AI to rewrite BIOS so they can boot unsupported 12 P-core Bartlett Lake CPU in Windows on a Z790 motherboard
Posted by rkhunter_@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 47 comments
dparks1234@reddit
It’s impressive what Claude can do when it is utilized by someone who already has a solid understanding of the underlying project. Definitely cuts down on raw gruntwork and the trial and error involved with hacks like these.
I still wish this had been officially released to consumers as a final swan song for DDR4.
PleaseDontEatMyVRAM@reddit
💯- "When utilized by someone who already has a solid understanding"
Lately it seems that ai allows you to throw the bowling ball down the lane, but you have to have someone knowledgeable on that given topic, especially if complex, to act as the "bumpers" to really score a "strike".
Hunter_Holding@reddit
Well, I hope this gets some high visibility, there was NO UEFI REWRITE.
It's a lot of swapping in and out various already made parts, kinda like super advanced legos.
Claude in *NO WAY* actually rewrote the system firmware.
It could conceivably mod it, yes.
Quite piss poor reporting to call it 'rewrite'
Note that the guy who did the actual job (direct claude, that is), said 'edited' not 'rewrote'.
Reading the thread, it also caused a fair amount of broke a lot of shit too :D
The reality is, some critical parts were edited, but 99.9999% of the firmware is exactly the same. Not rewritten, edited/modded.
And I really hate that this article uses BIOS over and over again. BIOS has been dead forever (except as a compatibility module - CSM/CFM - run by UEFI)
PanVidla@reddit
I think that everyone understood what they meant by "rewrote".
Hunter_Holding@reddit
A lot of people in the comments *didn't* clearly, and have the impression of entire firmware rewrites, which these tools just can't do.
JuanElMinero@reddit
At least around here, I think it's 95% of people still writing BIOS, despite most knowing it's actually UEFI.
Maybe BIOS is a much nicer sounding and convenient acronym ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
zacker150@reddit
AI squares everyone's ability. It turns 10x engineers into 100x engineers, 1x engineers into 1x engineers, and 0.1 engineers into 0.01 engineers.
StaysAwakeAllWeek@reddit
I've witnessed all three at work personally
Classic_File2716@reddit
Interesting.
ClickClick_Boom@reddit
It's supercharging already smart people into being smarter and supercharging stupid people into being even stupider.
996forever@reddit
Even doing simple research on just about everything is sped up by AI so easily. As long as you know how to check if the results are good, it still saves so much time
bigredsun@reddit
I was trying Claude the other day and it failed horribly at making a powershell script, I used Gemini to correct the script and Gemini said it was an impressive script but it was too much for its own good that's why it crashed at every step.
dparks1234@reddit
I use Claude at work and find that the prompt you give it matters way more than one might think. You basically want to tell it the exact details, along with what you don’t want it to do. Feeding it documentation as context also helps make it less stupid.
bigredsun@reddit
It was a simple script to organize and sort duplicated files in folders and then export the log to an html
Aos77s@reddit
That’s what I keep arguing is the good part of AI is. It’s a tool that makes the user far better at what he does. They might know how to work around their job 90% but there’s that 10% that you might not know that just put you beyond what you could’ve done work wise and because of that, you now know something new you can do because of the AI.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
This will be the true power of artificial intelligence. The ability to rewrite the actual computing stack to something completely unknown. You can’t protect against electrical engineering at the most basic levels.
sammothxc@reddit
It’s not that deep, it just wrote some code to fill in the gaps left by Intel marketing team. The CPU was already electrically compatible, not something “completely unknown”.
bakgwailo@reddit
You realize that people have been manually modding and reverse engineering BIOS manually for a very long time now, right?
sammothxc@reddit
Yes, I do it myself for old Intel 8088 based machines. That’s my point- this is nothing new.
bakgwailo@reddit
Lol, yeah, I replied to the wrong comment - my comment is directed to OP's reply to you, sorry. Fully agree with what you were saying.
/u/Candid_Koala_3602
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
It’s about access to ability not ability itself
Hunter_Holding@reddit
Yea, there was zero firmware rewrite. It hex edited a few IDs and conditional jumps. An extremely minor surgical edit, of a type that's well documented and done before in the past.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
I’ve done an edit like this myself, I understand it. What I’m saying is the majority of tech people do not have this depth, but now they have access to it
Hunter_Holding@reddit
Except, they actually *don't*.
The person was able to successfully guide it to do it correctly *because it was something they were skilled enough to do themselves* and otherwise would have if the tool didn't exist.
And that's the key.
AI tools are a great timesaver IF and ONLY IF it is something you could ALREADY DO YOURSELF given reasonable time a skilled person in the subject could do.
If you've never done anything like this and don't understand it at all, you will crash and burn and fail miserably. HARD.
I see it happen absolutely regularly. It's actually sad.
Knowing the subject matter is KEY to using these tools.
The person who did this probably saved themselves a few days of manual work by telling it exactly what it needed to find and do, and even then still had to correct and steer it with knowledge said person possessed.
I say this as someone who assists with and uses these tools extensively for a lot of low-level development work in a variety of scenarios, like full system emulation and firmware writing and whatnot.
Left alone they produce absolute bloated and broken garbage that's just random things mashed together. And doesn't work.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
You sound like you are trying to convince yourself more than me
Hunter_Holding@reddit
Not at all, this is something I deal with daily.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
Me too, and I’m still asserting you are underestimating what is now possible, even for users without knowledge
Hunter_Holding@reddit
Oh, some things are possible now, yes.
"Make a webapp and make it alive on AWS"
That's possible now and anyone can do it now.
And the results are comprisable extremely fast. With obscene runtime costs. Etc. But possible. (I had fun waltzing into my buddy's admin panel with simple a file upload/replace attack)
But that's textbook copy/paste scenario, essentially, and HTML/JS/etc which is relatively easy to parse and utilize.
Meanwhile, simply ask it to do what the OP above did, and unless you know how to help it or tell it what needs to be done normally, or what you'd look for and do, and it flat out *can't* do those things.
I run into this a lot in my dev work - almost every time, I have to steer it, but I always start out first with 'just do this thing'
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
I do too. I’ve been developing with the whole copilot-cli and MCP stack and the key is really the structuring of instructions for your project. I like to spend some time working with a few different AI chat windows to work out what my instructions layers need to be, and then have them help me define the project in the correct prompt wording to achieve my results using my repo architecture.
It’s a process for sure, but you can make it work. And yes, I understand people are having a really tough time with this, but those able to think outside of the box suddenly became monsters as far as their output.
BrowsOfSteel@reddit
> You can’t protect against electrical engineering at the most basic levels.
What does this even mean?
wintrmt3@reddit
But that's not what happened here, it slightly patched the BIOS to support the CPU.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
I know, I’m saying it’s possible
wintrmt3@reddit
Have a look at how utter shit CCC is, it is not possible.
Candid_Koala_3602@reddit
Ok buddy
aldencp@reddit
Now just use it to make a bios that has built-in text to speech so I, a blind person, can use it to optimize my system
Xurbax@reddit
Come on, Intel. You go on about "we hear you on platform longevity", then you won't even provide the bios fixes to make a newly-released cpu like this work on the existing motherboards (which clearly isn't terribly hard to make work)?
It doesn't give your claims much credibility. Okay, I can't say how much of a market there is for this, except that I want one. And the motherboard makers might not be too excited about updating their bioses... but you could make an attempt at least.
Seanspeed@reddit
As always, a mod project requires WAY less oversight and quality control than an official release of something.
Responding to whenever somebody asks, "Well if modders can do it, why cant the developers?" or whatever.
Gippy_@reddit
That's assuming an official release actually has quality control. Raptor Lake happened. Multiple motherboard recalls have happened over the past few years.
jenny_905@reddit
Can't understand why Intel doesn't seem to want to offer these chips up to enthusiasts.
Alarchy@reddit
They probably want to funnel people running VMs to Xeons. The performance on the Bartlett lake processors is around 14900k single core and slower than 14700k multi core, and it's more expensive than a 14900k, so it doesn't make a lot of sense for most consumers on LGA1700 still.
A 9950X is basically the same in gaming as a 9700X, so it's doubtful the extra 4 Pcores on a Bartlett lake would be any better in gaming than a 14900k.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/110614/intels-bartlett-lake-core-9-273pqe-spotted-on-passmark-just-12-percent-slower-than-core-i7-14700k/index.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-9950x/18.html
Exist50@reddit
In terms of production cost, at least, it should be a little bit cheaper than a 14900k.
The main advantage that Bartlett Lake could offer for gaming would be significantly higher ring clocks than RPL. That, and of course any game that still doesn't schedule well on hybrid systems.
WHY_DO_I_SHOUT@reddit
Thread Director should help with it though.
dexteritycomponents@reddit
Because it’s not what people think it is.
There’s too many people who expect it to be a godsend gaming CPU, when in reality it’s barely even better than a 14700k.
Gippy_@reddit
Choice is always good.
AMD has a whole family of X3D chips. Yes I know a bunch of them are just ones that couldn't pass 5800X3D binning. But any option is better than none.
The 273PQE (wtf with that name) with 12P/0E could still be a viable option, especially when the 14900K is still outrageously overpriced, and people's confidence in Raptor Lake is shot. If the 273PQE isn't a power consumption monster then Intel should still launch a limited run at the consumer market.
nanonan@reddit
Embarassment that it would outperform their latest perhaps? It's a product never meant for consumers, but surely someone picked up on the bizzare level of enthusiasm people have shown towards this product.
cicoles@reddit
How many mobo did he burn through to get it right?
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