Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
AlthoughsomeUEFIfirmwareimplementationswilllooklikeastandardBIOS,mostwill
be notable by their enhanced mouse-driven graphical interfaces combined with additional
features not found in older PC BIOS. You may find the following features in the UEFI
firmware of motherboards:
•
Diagnostics
—Tests that are much more comprehensive than the standard POST, in-
cluding tests for memory and hard disks.
•
Live Update
—A tool that can check the motherboard manufacturer website to see if
a firmware/BIOS update is available and then automatically download and install the
proper update.
•
HDD Backup
—A tool that backs up or clones a hard disk drive (HDD) from outside
the OS. This allows for complete backups and easy HDD upgrades.
•
Overclocking
—Enhancedintelligent overclockingutilitiesthatvirtuallyautomatethe
process and can easily undo the settings if they fail.
•
Boot Logo
—The ability to easily update or change the graphical boot logo seen when
you turn the system on.
As time goes on, I expect to see applications for web browsing, email, and other useful
capabilities that will almost make a PC with no OS useful all by itself.
UEFI Support
EventhoughEFIhasbeenaroundsince2000,fullsupportinthePCenvironmentwasvir-
tually nonexistent until 2008,and it wasn't really widespread until 2011.Intel began ship-
pingsome ofthe first motherboards with UEFI bootcapability in2006;however,OSsup-
port for UEFI wasn't available until Vista SP1 x64 was released in 2008. MSI shipped a
few specific motherboards in 2008 that had optional/experimental UEFI firmware (called
Click BIOS
), but few people really used it because such support really wasn't necessary
unless you had a boot drive equal to or greater than 2.2TB in capacity, and drives bigger
than that didn't come along until late 2010.
Coinciding with the introduction of the Intel 6x Series chipsets in 2011, many mother-
boards began including UEFI firmware as astandard feature. This was just intime tosup-
portthenew3TBdrivesthatwerebeginningtoappearonthemarket,aswellasthegrow-
ing move to 64-bit OSs such as Windows 7 x64.
If you want to boot from a GPT-formatted disk (2.2TB and larger disks must be formatted
as GPT), you need two things: a motherboard with UEFI firmware (at a minimum a UEFI
Boot option that is enabled) and an OS with UEFI support. Windows UEFI support is
providedonlyinthe64-bitversionsofVistaSP1andlater(includingWindows7),where-
as most newer 32-bit and 64-bit Linux versions support UEFI as well. Neither Windows
