Monday, February 11th 2019
AMD Radeon VII Has No UEFI Support
In what is turning out to be a massive QA oversight by AMD, people who bought retail Radeon VII graphics cards report that their cards don't support UEFI, and that installing the card in their machines causes their motherboard to engage CSM (compatibility support module), a key component of UEFI firmware that's needed to boot the machine with UEFI-unaware hardware (such as old storage devices, graphics cards, NICs, etc.,).
To verify this claim, we put the stock video BIOS of our Radeon VII sample in a hex editor, and what we found out startled us. The BIOS completely lacks UEFI support, including a GOP (graphics output protocol) driver. A GOP driver is a wafer-thin display driver that runs basic display functions on your GPU during the pre-boot environment. Without UEFI support for the graphics card (i.e. with CSM running), Windows 10 cannot engage Secure Boot. Since UEFI Secure Boot is a requirement for Microsoft Windows 10 Logo certification, we are having doubts whether AMD can really claim "Windows 10 compatible" for Radeon VII, at least until a BIOS update is available.
ASRock is the first AMD AIB (add-in board partner) to release a corrective BIOS update. Although designed for its Radeon VII Phantom Gaming graphics card, this BIOS ROM works with any reference-design Radeon VII graphics card. All Radeon VII cards are identical, so flashing the ASRock BIOS onto a Radeon VII from AMD or any other board partner will not cause any issues.
Parsing the ASRock BIOS ROM file through a hex editor lets us see telltale signs of UEFI support, including the GOP micro-driver. Please pay attention to the highlighted UEFI-magic, which, when read in Intel byte-order, becomes "0EF1" aka "UEFI" in leetspeak. This magic sequence of bytes tells the rest of the system that the BIOS on this specific device reports that it supports the UEFI standard.
It is highly likely that most, if not all, Radeon VII graphics cards shipped so far lack UEFI support, and in the coming days, all AIB partners could come up with BIOS updates. Trouble is, updating video BIOS isn't anywhere near as easy as updating motherboard BIOS, and not everyone is skilled or confident enough to tinker with it. One option AMD could try is an encapsulated one-click BIOS updater that can run from within Windows.
Last year, NVIDIA corrected widespread DisplayPort issues in its "Pascal" graphics cards using such an approach. Until something like that happens, you can grab the updated Radeon VII Phantom Gaming video BIOS from the TechPowerUp VGA BIOS Database, linked below. The ATI/AMD BIOS flashing software can also be found in our downloads section.
DOWNLOAD: ASRock Radeon VII Phantom Gaming BIOS Update with UEFI Support
Update Feb 12: AMD has confirmed that they will release a one-click BIOS updater on AMD.com very soon, and that their board partners have received a UEFI capable BIOS.
Source:
Discovery Thread on our Forums
To verify this claim, we put the stock video BIOS of our Radeon VII sample in a hex editor, and what we found out startled us. The BIOS completely lacks UEFI support, including a GOP (graphics output protocol) driver. A GOP driver is a wafer-thin display driver that runs basic display functions on your GPU during the pre-boot environment. Without UEFI support for the graphics card (i.e. with CSM running), Windows 10 cannot engage Secure Boot. Since UEFI Secure Boot is a requirement for Microsoft Windows 10 Logo certification, we are having doubts whether AMD can really claim "Windows 10 compatible" for Radeon VII, at least until a BIOS update is available.
Parsing the ASRock BIOS ROM file through a hex editor lets us see telltale signs of UEFI support, including the GOP micro-driver. Please pay attention to the highlighted UEFI-magic, which, when read in Intel byte-order, becomes "0EF1" aka "UEFI" in leetspeak. This magic sequence of bytes tells the rest of the system that the BIOS on this specific device reports that it supports the UEFI standard.
It is highly likely that most, if not all, Radeon VII graphics cards shipped so far lack UEFI support, and in the coming days, all AIB partners could come up with BIOS updates. Trouble is, updating video BIOS isn't anywhere near as easy as updating motherboard BIOS, and not everyone is skilled or confident enough to tinker with it. One option AMD could try is an encapsulated one-click BIOS updater that can run from within Windows.
Last year, NVIDIA corrected widespread DisplayPort issues in its "Pascal" graphics cards using such an approach. Until something like that happens, you can grab the updated Radeon VII Phantom Gaming video BIOS from the TechPowerUp VGA BIOS Database, linked below. The ATI/AMD BIOS flashing software can also be found in our downloads section.
DOWNLOAD: ASRock Radeon VII Phantom Gaming BIOS Update with UEFI Support
Update Feb 12: AMD has confirmed that they will release a one-click BIOS updater on AMD.com very soon, and that their board partners have received a UEFI capable BIOS.
81 Comments on AMD Radeon VII Has No UEFI Support
That makes as much sense as any other theory, probably. :)
Like HOW can you even manage to do something like this? This is 2019, what is the point of even making the flagship GPU without UEFI only support in the first place? Let's be realistic, people with 700 USD cards are not gonna be the ones running in BIOS.
I'm sorry I'd rather not flash a $700-$1300 video card vs a $100 motherboard.Dont forget those exploits from last year with blue eyeoval
nail bitingexcitin' innit? :pEven then there's no guarantee that the card will work typically you need a sp I flasher to fix vega and gf 1000 series
Vega and gf1000 series go into write lockout
problem solved even for the most useless of end user.
But I do in fact understand how this could have happened. And I don't blame the poor developer(s) who had to throw this firmware and driver together in a rush, but whoever decided to launch a product without their normal QA procedure. Problems like this is not uncommon in development, it's in fact very normal, when management makes last minute decisions and thinks the software (firmware and drivers in this case) can be adjusted in an instance. I'm not the only developer who knows how many nasty bugs that can sneak in when merging last-minute features into a code base.
Shame this will rightly mar this release but then all releases have been marred bar the 2060 which performs well for a price.
It could be easily fixed ill wager but were they caught out by the changes from the server sku or blind to it?.
And now UEFI was disabled. It almost came full circle... but we've got an official fix, it seems :clap:
github.com/pbatard/rufus/wiki/FAQ#Why_do_I_need_to_disable_Secure_Boot_to_use_UEFINTFS
amd should be able to fix it via software easy enough. its not a big issue to automate within the os but some may prefer to return for a refund and if they do i believe they are entitled to do that.
www.techpowerup.com/244981/nvidia-has-a-displayport-problem-which-only-a-bios-update-can-fix
Many others on here have similar comments to mine, lending weight to what I've said.