Say Goodbye To Your BIOS: Hello, UEFI!

[god_43]

The days of the good ol’ BIOS are numbered. The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) will introduce a more powerful solution able to better cope with the demands of today’s diverse hardware. In a nutshell, UEFI is an interface that takes care of handing over the pre-boot environment to the operating system. We took a quick look at UEFI and found some imminent issues.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-uefi-firmware,2486.html


:shocked:

[Gambit_2K]

Didn't MSI experiment with a UEFI on a board a while back? What happened to that?

Edit: Nevermind read the article :)

[NH|Delph1]

Nope.


Industry Support? Fail.

That pretty much summed it up. There won't be EFI in a long time.

Every media contact you speak to, off the record, don't believe in EFI for retail.

//Andreas

[nn_step]

bringing more complexity to the system, without bringing significant advantages and disabling fully open-source BIOS replacements like OpenBIOS and Coreboot.

It does not solve any of BIOS's long standing problems of requiring two different drivers for most hardware.
It is not clear why it is beneficial to have.
The Free Software Foundation has criticized it for pretending to open up, and for preventing interoperability: "It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does run. It is just a distraction."


In short the only boot standard that I trust for all hardware venders to follow for their bios replacement is one maintained and controlled by the free software foundation under the GPLv3 license; anything else is a waste of time and money

[Marios]

FUD. So we have to use and support UEFI since we won't be able to use over 2TB bootable disks in the future?
No thanks.

[RHKCommander959]

:ROTF: funny

thanks TH :up:

[zalbard]

Not happening any time soon.

[randomizer]

FUD. So we have to use and support UEFI since we won't be able to use over 2TB bootable disks in the future?
No thanks.

Only if you use Intel RAID from what I gathered. GPT works with BIOS.

[saaya]

exactly, what advantages does efi or uefi bring to the table?
what we need is to find a newer faster route, not build a new road following the same old route.
why do we have to initialize one piece of hardware after another?
why does it take time to initialize and detect hardware to begin with?
why dont we use a default image with everything loaded up and initialized to resume to instead of booting in case we dont use s3/s4?

[Hornet331]

exactly, what advantages does efi or uefi bring to the table?


Hmm lets see, no bootloder needed anymore, os independed drivers... possibility to include basic benchmark tools in the uefi, so i don't even need to boot up the os to bench...

[Particle]

Maybe I'm just a technological purist, but I'd welcome this for as simple a reason as getting rid of 16-bit execution.

[zanzabar]

FUD. So we have to use and support UEFI since we won't be able to use over 2TB bootable disks in the future?
No thanks.

MS already fixed that, u just need a system partition on the beginning of the disk, and why would u ever boot to a 2TB partition, i would say that we have atleast 10-20years before any1 would think of doing that

efi based systems are good for drm and stopping bios/settings changes, thats why msi stopped with it, it made the entire system unstable since u cant change boot voltage settings

[pausert20]

The interesting thing about UEFI/EFI is that Intel has had it in their BIOSes since the Lake Port chipset days. My understanding is that it is Microsoft slowing down the progress of UEFI by not supporting it as a default.

The 2TB RAID limit for a Boot drive is only limited to a RAID installation. Seems to be a RAID Option ROM issue. Currently that is a module that the Intel Board BIOS team takes from the Chipset group and drops it into their BIOS or so my friend at Intel tells me. He even said that Intels board business has had to give their apologies to several integrators who wanted to do larger than 2 TB boot drives for their business and the Board Group could not support them. My friend seemed to find it both funny and sad at the same time.

[XSAlliN]

efi based systems are good for drm and stopping bios/settings changes, thats why msi stopped with it, it made the entire system unstable since u cant change boot voltage settings

Yet for Intel that's good news, since they stated many times that they don't like the idea of OC, which makes the expensive CPU models unworthy. :)

[zanzabar]

Yet for Intel that's good news, since they stated many times that they don't like the idea of OC, which makes the expensive CPU models unworthy. :)

with a normal bios they could make it like the newer mobile parts were if the fsb is over the default it revers to the lowest multi, and they would rather have the ocing and enthusiast community than loose it to amd. but changing to efi makes it so u cant set ram properly and u cant change the settings for enabling or disabling integrated parts, IE u wouldent want to change the firmware to enable ahci or raid, or to turn onboard audio, jmicron sata/pata, serial, and firewire off, its much easier to just change a setting.

[BatteryOperated]

Another addition to the list of big ideas which will never happen...

RDRAM
SNES+CD0ROM
Effective seperation of church and state

just a few examples...

[safan80]

As it stands right Windows needs UEFI because it can't boot a GPT partition without it. Without GPT you won't be able to use >2TB with windows, keep that in mind when the >2TB hard drives come out.


Only if you use Intel RAID from what I gathered. GPT works with BIOS.

But windows does not. That includes the new windows 7.

[STaRGaZeR]

But does Win7 (or Vista) recognize GPT partitions >2TB with BIOS if you boot from another drive? i.e. booting from a SSD, then use the >2TB drive for storage.

[zanzabar]

As it stands right Windows needs UEFI because it can't boot a GPT partition without it. Without GPT you won't be able to use >2TB with windows, keep that in mind when the >2TB hard drives come out.



But windows does not. That includes the new windows 7.

why would u use a 2TB partition to boot to, and windows7 works with it, it has a system partition thats 100MB when u partition a drive with the win7 installer and thats supposed to fix the problem. or u can make a raid partition for the windows install. or they can update to a 64bit or larger lba. there are plenty of things other than efi that can fix that problem

[randomizer]

But windows does not. That includes the new windows 7.

That's not the least bit surprising, Windows is always behind. Microsoft insists on throwing away standards with everything they do and hoping their market share makes their own implementation become the real "standard."

[BababooeyHTJ]

Toms hardware :shakes:

I didn't even click on the link.

[Hornet331]

That's not the least bit surprising, Windows is always behind. Microsoft insists on throwing away standards with everything they do and hoping their market share makes their own implementation become the real "standard."

Ironically they are part of teh UEFI consortium. :p:

[safan80]

But does Win7 (or Vista) recognize GPT partitions >2TB with BIOS if you boot from another drive? i.e. booting from a SSD, then use the >2TB drive for storage.

You can't boot windows x64( Xp, Vista, 7, etc) off of >2TB partition using GPT without UEFI but you can use them after installing windows x64 to a <2TB drive or array it what I should said. In 5 years or so I don't imagine too many <2TB drives will be sold outside of SSDs. The thing is it will because frustrating to many users as time goes on. They promised when Vista was released the future versions of windows would be able to boot off of GPT, but windows 7 is nothing more then windows vista sp3. I'm disappointed in windows 7 for this reason alone.

[randomizer]

Ironically they are part of teh UEFI consortium. :p:

Of course they are. First they need to try and twist industry standards to suit them and if that fails they simply make up their own. They did it with IE, they did it with TRIM and they are probably doing it here too.

[STaRGaZeR]

You can't boot windows x64( Xp, Vista, 7, etc) off of >2TB partition using GPT without UEFI but you can use them after installing windows x64 to a <2TB drive or array it what I should said. In 5 years or so I don't imagine too many <2TB drives will be sold outside of SSDs. The thing is it will because frustrating to many users as time goes on. They promised when Vista was released the future versions of windows would be able to boot off of GPT, but windows 7 is nothing more then windows vista sp3. I'm disappointed in windows 7 for this reason alone.

No problem then. Why would you want to install Windows in a >2TB partition? That sounds crazy to me for several reasons.

[nn_step]

exactly, what advantages does efi or uefi bring to the table?
what we need is to find a newer faster route, not build a new road following the same old route.
why do we have to initialize one piece of hardware after another?
why does it take time to initialize and detect hardware to begin with?
why dont we use a default image with everything loaded up and initialized to resume to instead of booting in case we dont use s3/s4?

There is already better routes created; after several months of working in the binary/assembly world, I have grown to love and admire the dragonfly platform's solution. [Each piece of hardware is responsible to initialize or configure itself or have a user space server/driver that can easily perform the task] {Not to mention 64bit addressing space identifiers, clean minimal instruction set, conditional execution, large register set, and Hal_Code :D }

any ideas of which would be wonderful to find in any upcoming PC extensions.

[safan80]

No problem then. Why would you want to install Windows in a >2TB partition? That sounds crazy to me for several reasons.

That's not the point. The point is windows can not boot off a drive that uses GPT (unless you have UEFI). The partition does not have to be >2TB the drive just has to be using GPT. You have to use GPT on a drive that is >2TB. I may only want to use the first 100GB to my boot my OS but since the drive would be >2TB the whole drive has to use GPT and thus can not boot windows from it. Sure you could format a >2TB drive to MBR but you would be limited to only being able to use 2TB of it. You can not mix MBR and GPT on the same drive or array. One of the nice things about GPT is it does away with the 4 partition limit of MBR. GPT is also faster than mbr. Partition programs designed for MBR will not work on GPT.

I should note that the Itanium versions of windows can boot off of gpt partitions, so can most other non windows OSes like Linux and FreeBSD.

Here's MS' own faq on GPT
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

I hope you get the point why regular version of windows not being able to boot off of GPT without some version of EFI and it being a problem. It will be come more so when >2TB hard drives are out. The jump from MBR to GPT will be a bigger pill for the masses to handle than the jump from 32bit - 64Bit OSes.

here's the wiki on GPT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

[iddqd]

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello. Hello, hello...

[safan80]

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello. Hello, hello...

UEFI is a different standard from BIOS.

[Particle]

It's just a boot limitation. Windows has no trouble with arrays over 2TB.

[randomizer]

It's just a boot limitation.
One that shouldn't exist in a modern OS.

[mattkosem]

changing to efi makes it so u cant set ram properly and u cant change the settings for enabling or disabling integrated parts, IE u wouldent want to change the firmware to enable ahci or raid, or to turn onboard audio, jmicron sata/pata, serial, and firewire off, its much easier to just change a setting.

This sounds a little unbelievable. One would think a proper implementation of EFI would overcome these very simple limitations. Doing away with the 16-bit bios doesn't necessarily mean doing away with everything that you would normally do with it. I couldn't imagine tweaker mobo manufacturers leaving a functionality hole like that.

--Matt

[randomizer]

I couldn't imagine tweaker mobo manufacturers leaving a functionality hole like that.

Hence the reason we still use BIOS :D

[STEvil]

The smart thing to do would be to keep the BIOS for the essentials but have it load an UEFI or mini-OS for the core essentials...

[WaterFlex]

Wow! Thanks for this!

[saaya]

The smart thing to do would be to keep the BIOS for the essentials but have it load an UEFI or mini-OS for the core essentials...
so bios loads (u)efi loads os? hows that an improvement? :D

[randomizer]

Because you can write "Uses advanced new UEFI technology" on the box.

[nn_step]

Because you can write "Uses advanced new UEFI technology" on the box.

isn't that like trying to market mercury additives for all baby food?

also the 2TB limitation for a boot volume isn't a Bios limitation, it is a windows limitation. [Linux, freeBSD, and netBSD do not have such a limitation]

[mattkosem]

Hence the reason we still use BIOS :D

Probably more accurately stated as "a reason we still use bios", if a reason at all. Given the widespread usage of BIOS on current systems, the amount of time that it has been used, the responses from the vendors in that article, lack of support from Microsoft until very recently (Vista SP1+ x64 only), and the lack of solid reasoning behind making such a move it just sounds like they're not motivated enough to spend the resources on it at this point. You can set memory timings and clock speeds directly from windows. I'm sure they could implement it in EFI if they needed to do so. You have to remember that these are very simple configurations, things that were done with jumpers years ago. Besides, isn't this something that has already been done (MSI P45D3 Platinum and Asus P5Q both appear to support it)?

--Matt