UEFI BIOS Option

[essenbe]

At the current time UEFI and BIOS names are interchangable, but will fade away with time. Having UEFI supporting many BIOS features doesn't help either, but technological advances will eliminate the need for backward compatibility.

Currently, all UEFI boards support BIOS features, some of them more than others. While Gigabyte calls theirs "UEFI DUAL BIOS", it isn't dual at all, nor is it BIOS. My motherboard has two "BIOS ROMs" as the marketing material calls it. They could've called it UEFI ROM for all practical purposes...

The UEFI DUAL BIOS actually one is active, while the other is backup ROM. The backup cannot boot the system; however, the end user can save UEFI settings in the backup. The system also backs up a number of last know successful boot configuration, similarly as Windows does. The difference is that the end user would need to load the saved UEFI settings from the backup to the active ROM, if needed to.

We old timers didn't grow up with one BIOS, it had gone through number of changes since the beginning. We'll just need get used of the UEFI acronym as the interface for managing computer hardware. It's an OS on its own, much more than the BIOS used to be...

This discussion on this subject certaily helped me to understand UEFI and through that, quite a few things about my new motherboard. Thanks guys...

Cr00zng, are you sure about that? I have 2 bios chips, physically on the board. I have different bios rom files loaded onto each. I can boot from either one and it will show the correct bios version. Now, on the other hand, every time I have switched bios chips, on start up it shows, updating bios, then loads. Just trying to figure this out. I also have options to copy bios 1 to bios 2 and the other way around too.

 

[Cr00zng]

Cr00zng, are you sure about that? I have 2 bios chips, physically on the board. I have different bios rom files loaded onto each. I can boot from either one and it will show the correct bios version. Now, on the other hand, every time I have switched bios chips, on start up it shows, updating bios, then loads. Just trying to figure this out. I also have options to copy bios 1 to bios 2 and the other way around too.

Essenbe... In case of my Gigabyte board, I am pretty sure:






There's no option for booting from the second ROM, but does allow loading default, saved configuration, or saving configuration. I have one saved profile, pretty much defaults, that was added prior to OC-ing the CPU to 3.8 GHz. Most of the saved configurations are system managed*:

1. Profile 1: Default Xmp2
2. Boot Record: Last Known
3. Success Boot Record 1: > 5
4. Success Boot Record 2: > 5
5. Success Boot Record 3: > 3
6. Select File in HDD/FDD/USB

*-The image capture via "F12" did not work for this screen, a bug perhaps...

None of these had been tested yet. The chances are that I'd see some form of "updating BIOS" that loads the values from the backup to the active ROM, if tested. The board came with the latest BIOS, firmware really, of F11. Once updated, it remains to be seen if this version can be loaded from the backup ROM. In theory it should, but stranger things happened on the way to Danmark...

Our boards do have two EUFI ROMs and it seems that Asus does the same as Gigabyte. One of the ROMs is active, while the other is managed by the system for backup purposes. End user can save configuration to and load from the backup, but not booting from the backup ROM.

It isn't confusing enough getting a board with UEFI, each motherboard makers use their own definition for UEFI features...