We’ve been talking about EFI for quite a while now and MSI has always been on the forefront of this technology – this is the next generation BIOS structure that moves away from the 20-year-old Assembler-based design into a new, very user friendly interface where you can even use a mouse.
When you buy an MSI P45 board (it wasn’t stated which yet), MSI has said that it will deliver a free upgrade to EFI in and around the July timeframe. The company's representatives stressed to us that you can choose whether to go back or forth if you like it or prefer the standard legacy BIOS – it won’t be a permanent switch.
One thing we had serious reservations about was the supposed “Vista x64 SP1” limitation – what happens on EFI-based board when you install or use an OS that isn’t Windows Vista x64 SP1? Do you need to streamline SP1 into a Vista x64 DVD or revert the BIOS every time?
Fortunately, no! You can use EFI and install any operating system you want, however you can’t use any in-Windows tools to see the BIOS options (including stuff like CPU-Z, temperature monitoring or clock-gen tools) if you don’t use Windows Vista x64 SP1. You can still use and overclock that board via the new EFI BIOS though if you want to stick to XP.
This is awesome news – one of the concerns was that only Vista x64 SP1 could use and see it at all, but since that isn’t the case we can see a much, much wider take up of EFI this year which should make things far more user friendly.
Excited about EFI, or is it just flashy crap and the old school the only way to do things? Let us know in the forums.
When you buy an MSI P45 board (it wasn’t stated which yet), MSI has said that it will deliver a free upgrade to EFI in and around the July timeframe. The company's representatives stressed to us that you can choose whether to go back or forth if you like it or prefer the standard legacy BIOS – it won’t be a permanent switch.
One thing we had serious reservations about was the supposed “Vista x64 SP1” limitation – what happens on EFI-based board when you install or use an OS that isn’t Windows Vista x64 SP1? Do you need to streamline SP1 into a Vista x64 DVD or revert the BIOS every time?
Fortunately, no! You can use EFI and install any operating system you want, however you can’t use any in-Windows tools to see the BIOS options (including stuff like CPU-Z, temperature monitoring or clock-gen tools) if you don’t use Windows Vista x64 SP1. You can still use and overclock that board via the new EFI BIOS though if you want to stick to XP.
This is awesome news – one of the concerns was that only Vista x64 SP1 could use and see it at all, but since that isn’t the case we can see a much, much wider take up of EFI this year which should make things far more user friendly.
Excited about EFI, or is it just flashy crap and the old school the only way to do things? Let us know in the forums.
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