It took a few months, but Asus has finally made available a firmware update for select models of its Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics cards that unlocks faster memory speeds. After applying the upgraded BIOS, GDDR6 memory speeds will increase from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps.

In case you missed it, AMD distributed a BIOS update at the 11th hour in January that unlocked faster memory speeds on 5600 XT cards, creating a bit of a headache for add-in board partners and consumers.

Although not explicitly stated, this was an obvious reaction to Nvidia's price drop on the GeForce RTX 2060 just as AMD was about to launch it. The problem with the last minute BIOS update was that some cards were already shipping with slow memory. Therefore, AMD's hardware partners were responsible for providing BIOS updates for the affected models.

Updating the BIOS can be scary for inexperienced users, even though it is relatively easy to do these days. For example, if the PC is turned off in the middle of the update.

Further complicating matters, not all cards are designed with faster memory speeds in mind. The chips used are essentially the same, but as MSI and PowerColor pointed out at the time, it is not always as simple as flipping a switch.

"Our stock model 5600 XT follows AMD's reference specifications, but shares (the same) memory modules as the Red Devil and Red Dragon. The reason for this is that the Red Devil and Red Dragon have 10 PCB layers versus the stock 5600 XT's 8. Having a 10-layer PCB is important for the higher clock speeds of GDDR6 14Gbps memory," PowerColor explained.

Nevertheless, some of the early 5600 XT models received BIOS updates to allow for faster memory, and as HardwareLuxx's Andreas Schilling discovered, a couple of Asus cards have now joined the fray Specifically, the following models:

If you own one of these models, you can obtain the latest BIOS revision from the link above. Before applying the firmware update, please review the guide produced by Asus for detailed instructions.