• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Finally, Gigabyte Goes UEFI

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,283 (7.69/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
Gigabyte surprised many last year, when it broke its decade-long tradition of blue-colored PCBs to unveil its first black ones. Pictures of the first black PCB Gigabyte boards were first dismissed as Photoshop jobs, but after some confirmation, news posts carried quite some shock-value. It's such small things that Gigabyte has known to be quite particular about. Not that it's bad, Gigabyte is the second biggest motherboard vendor because many of its rigid design policies paid off, but some of these could work against the company.

One such has been the company's reluctance to use UEFI firmware on its motherboards. With socket LGA1155 and AM3+, we saw motherboard vendors of all shapes and sizes, including much smaller ones such as BIOSTAR adopt UEFI. Besides allowing vendors to deploy mouse-driven graphical user interface for the CMOS Setup program, UEFI addresses many glaring limitations of legacy BIOS, which hasn't changed much over decades. UEFI allows you to boot from volumes bigger than 2.2 TB in size. Eventually, storage volumes several terabytes in size will become mainstream, and that's when the ticking time-bomb that is BIOS, will blow.



Gigabyte tried to address the limitation with what it calls "HybridEFI", which is nothing to do with UEFI, but is rather an address-space tweak for existing AwardBIOS code that allows you to boot from large volumes. That still leaves out the problem of Gigabyte's notably slow and convoluted CMOS setup program navigation. One genuine upside of HybridEFI is that Gigabyte has been able to provide BIOS updates to many of its older motherboards with 16 Mbit EEPROMs, that give them the feature. Gigabyte is hence the only motherboard vendor with socket LGA775, LGA1156, LGA1366, and AM3 motherboards that can boot from >2.2 TB volumes.

Finally, it seems like Gigabyte broke another big "tradition", that of using AMI BIOS over AwardBIOS. Award doesn't seem to have a template UEFI firmware that vendors can work their own UIs on. Gigabyte's BIOS team is known to have programmers who have had first-hand experience in programming AwardBIOS, which could explain the company's slow transition to UEFI. Spotted on working models of Gigabyte's LGA2011 X79 motherboards on display at IDF, Gigabyte is using an AMI UEFI BIOS with its own GUI. Add to this, Gigabyte found a way to give its AMI BIOS the huge advantage of its patented DualBIOS technology, an automatic redundant EEPROM switching technology that protects from damaged BIOS or failed BIOS flashing.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
Last edited:
Joined
Mar 26, 2010
Messages
9,762 (1.91/day)
Location
Jakarta, Indonesia
System Name micropage7
Processor Intel Xeon X3470
Motherboard Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. P55A-UD3R (Socket 1156)
Cooling Enermax ETS-T40F
Memory Samsung 8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3
Video Card(s) NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800
Storage V-GEN03AS18EU120GB, Seagate 2 x 1TB and Seagate 4TB
Display(s) Samsung 21 inch LCD Wide Screen
Case Icute Super 18
Audio Device(s) Auzentech X-Fi Forte
Power Supply Silverstone 600 Watt
Mouse Logitech G502
Keyboard Sades Excalibur + Taihao keycaps
Software Win 7 64-bit
Benchmark Scores Classified
nice.
UEFI is on the way
 

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,283 (7.69/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
Added a note in third paragraph about the upside of HybridEFI.
 
Joined
Apr 4, 2008
Messages
4,686 (0.80/day)
System Name Obelisc
Processor i7 3770k @ 4.8 GHz
Motherboard Asus P8Z77-V
Cooling H110
Memory 16GB(4x4) @ 2400 MHz 9-11-11-31
Video Card(s) GTX 780 Ti
Storage 850 EVO 1TB, 2x 5TB Toshiba
Case T81
Audio Device(s) X-Fi Titanium HD
Power Supply EVGA 850 T2 80+ TITANIUM
Software Win10 64bit
Looks a bit like the styling MSI just abandoned for looking like crap.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
3,159 (0.56/day)
System Name White Theme
Processor Intel 12700K CPU
Motherboard ASUS STRIX Z690-A D4
Cooling Lian Li Galahad Uni w/ AL120 Fans
Memory 32GB DDR4-3200 Corsair Vengeance
Video Card(s) Gigabyte Aero 4080 Super 16GB
Storage 2TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIE 4.0
Display(s) Alienware 38" 3840x1600 (165Hz)
Case Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO White
Audio Device(s) 2i2 Scarlett Solo + Schiit Magni 3 AMP
Power Supply Corsair HX 1000 Platinum
Can't wait for this, was trying to find a reason to change motherboards but now I have none since they've released the new BIOS update for 22nm CPU support and PCIE3.0 and now I am hoping this UEFI becomes a BIOS update for us P67 users.
 

de.das.dude

Pro Indian Modder
Joined
Jun 13, 2010
Messages
8,757 (1.74/day)
Location
Stuck in a PC. halp.
System Name Monke | Work Thinkpad| Old Monke
Processor Ryzen 5600X | Ryzen 5500U | FX8320
Motherboard ASRock B550 Extreme4 | ? | Asrock 990FX Extreme 4
Cooling 240mm Rad | Not needed | hyper 212 EVO
Memory 2x16GB DDR4 3600 Corsair RGB | 16 GB DDR4 3600 | 16GB DDR3 1600
Video Card(s) Sapphire Pulse RX6700XT 12GB | Vega 8 | Sapphire Pulse RX580 8GB
Storage Samsung 980 nvme (Primary) | some samsung SSD
Display(s) Dell 2723DS | Some 14" 1080p 98%sRGB IPS | Dell 2240L
Case Ant Esports Tempered case | Thinkpad | Antec
Audio Device(s) Logitech Z333 | Jabra corpo stuff
Power Supply Corsair RM750e | not needed | Corsair GS 600
Mouse Logitech G400 | nipple
Keyboard Logitech G213 | stock kb is awesome | Logitech K230
VR HMD ;_;
Software Windows 10 Professional x3
Benchmark Scores There are no marks on my bench
that mobo looks sexy!
 
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
2,452 (0.41/day)
System Name PC
Processor i7 9700KF
Motherboard MSI Z390 A PRO
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000mhz
Video Card(s) PALIT RTX 4070 Dual 12Gb
Storage 2X Crucial MX500 2TB SSD, Samsung 850 pro 512gb SSD
Display(s) DELL C34H89x 34" Ultrawide
Case Corsair Obsidian 550D
Audio Device(s) Audioengine A5+ Speakers
Power Supply Corsair RM750
Mouse Logitech G403
Keyboard Corsair Vengeance K70
Software Windows 10 64bit
wow they sure took their time to go UEFI! thats why I bought an Asus board when i upgraded to P67
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
3,471 (0.61/day)
System Name Acer Aspire V3-771G-53218G75Maii
Processor Core i5 3210M (2,5-3,1Ghz)
Memory 8GB DDR3 SODIMM
Video Card(s) Geforce GT650M
Storage Samsung 830 256GB - 750GB Toshiba drive
Software Windows 7 x64 Home Premium (non-acer-bloatware)
UEFI will be a definite argument for my next upgrade
 
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
2,452 (0.41/day)
System Name PC
Processor i7 9700KF
Motherboard MSI Z390 A PRO
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000mhz
Video Card(s) PALIT RTX 4070 Dual 12Gb
Storage 2X Crucial MX500 2TB SSD, Samsung 850 pro 512gb SSD
Display(s) DELL C34H89x 34" Ultrawide
Case Corsair Obsidian 550D
Audio Device(s) Audioengine A5+ Speakers
Power Supply Corsair RM750
Mouse Logitech G403
Keyboard Corsair Vengeance K70
Software Windows 10 64bit
those screenshots of Gigabyes UEFI interface look a bit meh in comparison to the Asus IMO

 
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
13,791 (1.94/day)
I don't see this as anything good to be frank. If anyone remembers what kind of interfaces asian companies produce, i'm not looking forward to it at all. It's usually all bling and nearly zero functionality.
 

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,283 (7.69/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
ASUS has the best setup program home-screen. Internal setup pages are barely different between any of the AMI UEFI implementations out there today. A distant second is MSI's new screen home-screen.



It even has a web-browser.
 
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
2,452 (0.41/day)
System Name PC
Processor i7 9700KF
Motherboard MSI Z390 A PRO
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000mhz
Video Card(s) PALIT RTX 4070 Dual 12Gb
Storage 2X Crucial MX500 2TB SSD, Samsung 850 pro 512gb SSD
Display(s) DELL C34H89x 34" Ultrawide
Case Corsair Obsidian 550D
Audio Device(s) Audioengine A5+ Speakers
Power Supply Corsair RM750
Mouse Logitech G403
Keyboard Corsair Vengeance K70
Software Windows 10 64bit
Joined
Nov 4, 2005
Messages
11,655 (1.73/day)
System Name Compy 386
Processor 7800X3D
Motherboard Asus
Cooling Air for now.....
Memory 64 GB DDR5 6400Mhz
Video Card(s) 7900XTX 310 Merc
Storage Samsung 990 2TB, 2 SP 2TB SSDs and over 10TB spinning
Display(s) 56" Samsung 4K HDR
Audio Device(s) ATI HDMI
Mouse Logitech MX518
Keyboard Razer
Software A lot.
Benchmark Scores Its fast. Enough.
I had a windows 95 machine with a mouse driven BIOS at work years ago. Some older Compaq's had mouse menus as well.

Congrats the rest of the world on catching up to 1994.
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
3,471 (0.61/day)
System Name Acer Aspire V3-771G-53218G75Maii
Processor Core i5 3210M (2,5-3,1Ghz)
Memory 8GB DDR3 SODIMM
Video Card(s) Geforce GT650M
Storage Samsung 830 256GB - 750GB Toshiba drive
Software Windows 7 x64 Home Premium (non-acer-bloatware)
I had a windows 95 machine with a mouse driven BIOS at work years ago. Some older Compaq's had mouse menus as well.

Congrats the rest of the world on catching up to 1994.

You might also remember that back in 1994, there was still proper rock music on the radio. Wonder if that will catch up too:rockout:
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
3,159 (0.56/day)
System Name White Theme
Processor Intel 12700K CPU
Motherboard ASUS STRIX Z690-A D4
Cooling Lian Li Galahad Uni w/ AL120 Fans
Memory 32GB DDR4-3200 Corsair Vengeance
Video Card(s) Gigabyte Aero 4080 Super 16GB
Storage 2TB Samsung 980 Pro PCIE 4.0
Display(s) Alienware 38" 3840x1600 (165Hz)
Case Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO White
Audio Device(s) 2i2 Scarlett Solo + Schiit Magni 3 AMP
Power Supply Corsair HX 1000 Platinum
I don't see this as anything good to be frank. If anyone remembers what kind of interfaces asian companies produce, i'm not looking forward to it at all. It's usually all bling and nearly zero functionality.

Both MSI and ASUS are asian companies along with GIGABYTE. If you are referring to UEFI in general then that is debatable I guess.
 
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Messages
13,791 (1.94/day)
I'm talking to asian products in general. But they are sorting it out slowly. In the past they couldn't get past flashy colorful uncompressed bitmap based massive interfaces for everything.
 

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,283 (7.69/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
I had a windows 95 machine with a mouse driven BIOS at work years ago.

I had that, too. That wasn't an embedded BIOS. The machine would have Compaq's own BIOS without a CMOS setup program. The BIOS would detect new IDE, PCI and ISA devices on each boot. The mouse-driven setup program you're talking about would come on a bootable floppy. The bootable floppy is a DOS boot disk that would autorun a program. So basically, that was an OS-based setup program, just like Gigabyte's TouchBIOS.

Edit. Wait, I think you're right. AMI did have a GUI mouse-driven embedded setup program back in 1993. I remember seeing them on some 80486 (pre-Pentium!) boards. I think it was canned because it needed a big, expensive EEPROM chip.
 
Last edited:

tilldeath

New Member
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
200 (0.04/day)
I'm not really up to date on the uefi, but will this be a possible upgrade to existing motherboard bios with a flash? Or does it acutally have to be built into the bios at factory?
 

XoR

New Member
Joined
Jul 11, 2011
Messages
27 (0.01/day)
I had a windows 95 machine with a mouse driven BIOS at work years ago. Some older Compaq's had mouse menus as well.

Congrats the rest of the world on catching up to 1994.
I had such thing too for my Pentium 166. It looked somewhat similar to GEM (and with that to Win3.1x too) but you really couldn't move any windows around :)

I was pretty disappointed that later computers had normal ugly bioses but eventually got used to them :)
 
Joined
Oct 29, 2009
Messages
2,666 (0.51/day)
System Name Old Gateway / Steam Deck OLED LE
Processor i5 4440 3.1ghz / Jupiter 4c 8t
Motherboard Gateway / Valve
Cooling Eh it doesn't thermal throttle
Memory 2x 8GB JEDEC 1600mhz DDR3 / 16gb DDR5 6400
Video Card(s) RX 560D 4GB / Navi II 8CU
Storage 240gb 2.5 SSD / 1TB nvme
Display(s) Dell @ 1280*1024 75hz / 800p OLED
Case Gateway / Valve LE
Audio Device(s) Gateway Diamond Audio EMC2.0-USB 5375U ($15 a long ass time ago), Valve
Power Supply 380w oem / 65w valve USB-C
Mouse Purple Walmart special, 1600dpi. Black desk mat
Keyboard SteelSeries Apex 100 / virtual
VR HMD Lmao
Software Windows 10 / Steam OS
Benchmark Scores It can run Crysis (Original), Doom 2016, and Halo MCC. SD LE 45fps
i think uefi requires more space due to all the images and whatnot, so many current boards may not be able to load UEFI even if the manufacturer wanted to. unless some boards have socketed bios chips that the manufacturer could send as an upgrade that have more storage room for the UEFI software rom

^ @tilldeath

@xor and steevo. I was thinking the same thing. I think it was a packard bell that i used with a s7 166cpu. the interface reminded me of an early mac os. it was pretty cool though at the time. (still is really). too bad there were no OC settings, o wait that's what jumpers were for back then ;)

as for the built in web browser... that's pretty neat. will come in handy if you need to google settings or forgot to get drivers (at least one would hope you can dl files to a flash drive)
 
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Messages
5,147 (0.78/day)
Location
AZ
System Name Thought I'd be done with this by now
Processor i7 11700k 8/16
Motherboard MSI Z590 Pro Wifi
Cooling Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 4, 9x aigo AR12
Memory 32GB GSkill TridentZ Neo DDR4-4000 CL18-22-22-42
Video Card(s) MSI Ventus 2x Geforce RTX 3070
Storage 1TB MX300 M.2 OS + Games, + cloud mostly
Display(s) Samsung 40" 4k (TV)
Case Lian Li PC-011 Dynamic EVO Black
Audio Device(s) onboard HD -> Yamaha 5.1
Power Supply EVGA 850 GQ
Mouse Logitech wireless
Keyboard same
VR HMD nah
Software Windows 10
Benchmark Scores no one cares anymore lols
this annoys me actually, there's a reason server bios's are still all text based. We want function, not pretties. Pretties are for clients that hit the applications hosted on the server.


I like function in my bios, pretties in my OS. prettying up my bios and losing relevant and necessary features isn't my idea of advancement.
 

XoR

New Member
Joined
Jul 11, 2011
Messages
27 (0.01/day)
@xor and steevo. I was thinking the same thing. I think it was a packard bell that i used with a s7 166cpu. the interface reminded me of an early mac os. it was pretty cool though at the time. (still is really). too bad there were no OC settings, o wait that's what jumpers were for back then ;)

as for the built in web browser... that's pretty neat. will come in handy if you need to google settings or forgot to get drivers (at least one would hope you can dl files to a flash drive)
my motherboard wasn't HP branded (there were no HP logo) but where from it was I don't realy know cause I bought it used. It was probably generic thing on AMI BIOSes of that time...

as for web browser in bios asus boards with linux inside could write on flash drives :rockout:
 
Joined
Nov 4, 2005
Messages
11,655 (1.73/day)
System Name Compy 386
Processor 7800X3D
Motherboard Asus
Cooling Air for now.....
Memory 64 GB DDR5 6400Mhz
Video Card(s) 7900XTX 310 Merc
Storage Samsung 990 2TB, 2 SP 2TB SSDs and over 10TB spinning
Display(s) 56" Samsung 4K HDR
Audio Device(s) ATI HDMI
Mouse Logitech MX518
Keyboard Razer
Software A lot.
Benchmark Scores Its fast. Enough.
I had that, too. That wasn't an embedded BIOS. The machine would have Compaq's own BIOS without a CMOS setup program. The BIOS would detect new IDE, PCI and ISA devices on each boot. The mouse-driven setup program you're talking about would come on a bootable floppy. The bootable floppy is a DOS boot disk that would autorun a program. So basically, that was an OS-based setup program, just like Gigabyte's TouchBIOS.

Edit. Wait, I think you're right. AMI did have a GUI mouse-driven embedded setup program back in 1993. I remember seeing them on some 80486 (pre-Pentium!) boards. I think it was canned because it needed a big, expensive EEPROM chip.

Hells yeah, the machine shipped with 3.1, it had a whopping 32MB of RAM and a blistering fast 66Mhz processor DX-2.
 
Joined
Oct 4, 2007
Messages
2,452 (0.41/day)
System Name PC
Processor i7 9700KF
Motherboard MSI Z390 A PRO
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000mhz
Video Card(s) PALIT RTX 4070 Dual 12Gb
Storage 2X Crucial MX500 2TB SSD, Samsung 850 pro 512gb SSD
Display(s) DELL C34H89x 34" Ultrawide
Case Corsair Obsidian 550D
Audio Device(s) Audioengine A5+ Speakers
Power Supply Corsair RM750
Mouse Logitech G403
Keyboard Corsair Vengeance K70
Software Windows 10 64bit
this annoys me actually, there's a reason server bios's are still all text based. We want function, not pretties. Pretties are for clients that hit the applications hosted on the server.


I like function in my bios, pretties in my OS. prettying up my bios and losing relevant and necessary features isn't my idea of advancement.

Yes i do agree with you, though with my upgrade i was presented with a choice of Asus with its slick UEFI bios option or Gigabyte with its half assed attempt at UEFI with possible future updates... you can guess which way I went ;)
 
Top