i have HP nc6000 with possibly Phoenix BIOS. Also it says 68BDD version or smth. I have put Dothan CPU in it and all is OK. But i see that Intel posted cpu microcodes for Dothan and there are new versions for it dated on 2009 and even 2010 years. It must be the reason why Intel does it because Banias CPU (my old one) has last microcode dated on 2004. So i want to find out what microcode does this BIOS have and also want to update it. Is it as easily as on AMI APTIO??? Also what benefits will it give except stability of course. Will it increase performance???
CPU microcode updates are mainly for bug fixes. Probably 99% of the time you won't see a difference unless you're hit by an errata bug. Also from what I remember, the Microsoft includes Intel and AMD microcodes with their CPU drivers. I might not be the latest but should be good enough. If you're talking Linux, then the Intel microcode files are updated with the "microcode_ctl" service and you can manually update the file itself if your distribution has not done so.