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Gigabyte Teases Its New UEFI BIOS For Z87 Motherboards

Subject: Motherboards | May 6, 2013 - 05:32 PM |
Tagged: gigabyte, z87, uefi, bios

Over the weekend, Gigabyte posted a new photo to its Facebook page that teased the interface of the company’s upcoming UEFI BIOS. The new UEFI DualBIOS interface features an orange and black theme with a black background, orange accents, and white text. From the preview photos of Gigabyte’s Z87 motherboards, the BIOS colors will match up nicely with the actual black and orange colored hardware.

Gigabyte Z87 UEFI BIOS.jpg

The middle pane occupies the most space and brings all of your standard BIOS setup and overclocking settings front and center. Gigabyte has laid out the various settings into tabbed categories. Users can further customize a shortcut menu on the right-most tab. This settings pane is surrounded on all sides by various bars and columns with status information.

The top bar includes graphs on the system’s voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures. The bottom bar displays system information such as the total amount of RAM installed, CPU and BIOS identification, and other information. On the left of the main settings panel is a column with readouts on the installed processor. The information it provides at a glance includes CPU voltage, frequency, temperature, and core ratio. It also lists the CPU fan speeds. Meanwhile, the column on the right-hand side of the display hosts temperature and fan speed information for the PCH, system/case sensor, and up to five case fans.

While some enthusiasts might balk at the orange, black, and white color scheme, in all it looks like a nice improvement. Most of the information is available at a glance, and the customizable shortcut menu is a useful feature.

You can find the original photo as well as several other preview photos on Gigabyte’s Facebook page.

What do you think about the new UEFI BIOS UI?

Source: Gigabyte

Remember the Phoenix BIOS screen?

Subject: General Tech | December 5, 2011 - 12:18 PM |
Tagged: bios, phoenix, win8, qualcomm, texas instruments, windows on arm, WOA

American Megatrends Inc., aka AMI, pretty much rules the world of the PC BIOS after virtually booting Phoenix and Award from the market.  A recent post on DigiTimes shows that Phoenix is planning on making a splash with the arrival of Windows 8.  It is not just the PC market that Phoenix intends to rise again in; they are working with ARM to develop a BIOS for Windows on ARM as well as talking with Qualcomm and Texas Instruments about designing BIOS for their devices.  Could it be that they will indeed fire up a new age of competition in the BIOS market?

phoenix_bios.jpg

"BIOS player Phoenix Technologies has recently announced its latest Phoenix SCT 2.2 solution to assist its PC partners to develop systems based on Windows 8, according to the company.

Currently, American Megatrends (AMI) is dominating in the desktop BIOS market, with Insyde Software and Phoenix accounting for 55% and 45% of the notebook BIOS market, respectively.

President of Phoenix Greater China, Kelly Wu pointed out that the company's new solution has more than 60 new functions to support Windows 8 and is optimized for system performance, security, connectivity, mobility and user experience."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: DigiTimes

Oh joy the BIOS level trojan is finally here

Subject: General Tech | September 13, 2011 - 01:00 PM |
Tagged: security, fud, bios, trojan, bmw

You do not want BMW; it is a Trojan that uses your master boot record and your BIOS to ensure that it remains on your system so even after a format and reinstall of Windows it will still be infecting you.  It originally infects winlogon.exe on Windows XP and Server 2003, and to wininit.exe on Windows 7 and Vista but once it is on it installs and uses HOOK.ROM at the BIOS level to check to see if it has been uninstalled and if so it will reinstall itself.  The Register points out that in this case the enormous variety of BIOS setups is a good thing as it ensures that any BIOS level virus will always be limited in scope even if it is a vulnerability shared by a single BIOS type.

biohazard.png

"SECURITY RESEARCHERS at Chinese antivirus firm 360 have identified a piece of malware that installs rogue code into the BIOS of targeted computers.

Dubbed BMW by 360 and Mebromi by other security vendors, the threat has separate components for the operating system, the master boot record (MBR) and the system BIOS."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: The Inquirer

New Gigabyte Tool Switches SATA Mode In Windows

Subject: Motherboards | August 30, 2011 - 07:17 AM |
Tagged: Utility, p67, motherboard, Intel, gigabyte, bios

According to Tech Power UP, Gigabyte recently released a Windows tool that allows users to change the SATA controller mode without digging into the BIOS. The SATA controller mode relates to how the controller on the motherboard or add-on card communicates with the hard drive or SSD. Users will be able to choose from legacy IDE, AHCI, and RAID modes. From the brightly colored Windows tool, users can change the setting accordingly. The utility will then write the setting to the CMOS and prompt the user to reboot the computer so that the change can take effect.

The tool will work with any Gigabyte motherboards with the Intel H61, H67, P67, or Z68 chipsets. Further, the utility will run on both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. It is available to download from here.  The package comes as a zip file containing an executable that does not need to be installed, which is a welcome touch.

diskswitch.png

While the Gigabyte Disk Mode Switch tool will make changing the setting easier than digging through the BIOS, it effectively accomplishes the same thing. What this means from a practical standpoint is that the Windows tool for changing the SATA mode suffers from the same issues that changing it in the BIOS does; mainly that the (Windows) operating system does not like such drastic changes and the user may encounter problems with Windows recognizing the drive and/or assigning the proper drivers. This is an issue primarily when changing the SATA mode of the drive that the operating system is installed on. While there are some registry tweaks that promise to help smooth the process, it is generally recommend to ensure the proper SATA mode is set before installing Windows onto the drive. Therefore, this tool’s usefulness is somewhat questionable.

Have you encountered any issues in changing the SATA mode post-install? Is this gigabyte tool useful or just another piece of manufacturer "helpware" that DIYers will never use?

Source: Tech Power Up

AMD's new and improved minimalist BIOS replacement, Coreboot

Subject: General Tech | May 9, 2011 - 11:51 AM |
Tagged: amd, coreboot, uefi, bios, embedded, llano, opteron, s3

A lot of attention is being paid to UEFI, the new graphical BIOS replacement that not only lets you utilize 2TB+ drives as a boot device but will give you mouse control over the games that come integrated with your settings.  It does offer quite a few advantages over the old BIOS but adds complexity as well.  AMD has gone a different route with their Opteron series with Coreboot (aka LinuxBIOS) a different way of initializing a computer.  It does a very minimal hardware initialization and then moves into what is called a payload, which contains the familiar abilities of the BIOS but not integrated directly into the hardware initialization in any way.  This is far more useful for server and embedded applications than the latest ROG board, which is why embedded Llano will be receiving support and why Opteron already does.  Follow the links from The Inquirer for more.

Coreboot_menuconfig1.png

"CHIP DESIGNER AMD has announced that its upcoming Llano accelerated processing unit (APU) will support Coreboot.

AMD has been pushing development the BIOS replacement initiative Coreboot for many years but has focused on getting support for its embedded and server processors. Now the company has come out and said that all of its future processors will support Coreboot, from Llano onwards."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

Source: The Inquirer

Gigabyte demos TouchBIOS configuration tool

Subject: Motherboards | April 29, 2011 - 12:52 PM |
Tagged: gigabyte, bios, touchbios

For pretty much all of my life, the BIOS of a motherboard has been the same old boring DOS-sytle coloring and controls.  Arrow keys, enter, that's pretty much it.  The recent adoption of the EFI standard is changing that quite a bit and if you look at some of our recent motherboard reviews, you'll notice that BIOS manipulation is now much more intuitive and graphical interesting.  

Gigabyte sent over a link to a video demonstrating their latest enhancement to the BIOS known as "TouchBIOS".  As the name implies, the interface has been tweaked for a touch screen though you can obviously also use a mouse to get the job done.  This is a Windows application however, so keep that in mind - you aren't actually able to use a touch screen when entering the BIOS.  Applying the changes also requires a reboot, so there is no additional magic there.

So what do you guys think?  Is this is a useful addition to the world of BIOS controls?

Source: Gigabyte

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