Gigabyte BIOS upgrade to UEFI(PITA)

[James7679]

I happened upon a UEFI upgrade for my motherboard(GA-Z68a-d3-b3) a few days ago. Having only been use to the clunky(yet effective) Award BIOS, I was a bit apprehensive at first. But eventually, my curiosity got the better of me.
1. Made the bootable USB flash drive
2. Rebooted to the USB flash drive
3. Flash utility ran
4, System rebooted cleanly
5. Opened UEFI, set basic settings
6. Noticed that the VCORE offset is locked :angry: For those that don't know, I OC.
7. Sighed, saved and exited.
8. Reboot was clean and no hiccups, until the Windows login window popped up.
9. Res was 800x600 and keyboard and mouse were inoperable.
10. Knowing full well that the UEFI, itself, would not cause this, I proceeded to reboot the PC.
11. After a half an hour of reboots, the 1080p res popped up and the mouse and keyboard became functional
12. Logged into Windows to find that some very basic settings were undone and some programs were damaged
13, Oh, and the biggest PITA, had to reactivate Windows over the phone. For some reason, Windows recognized the UEFI as a new MoBo

So, just a heads up to anyone thinking about upgrading to UEFI, be prepared for some headaches. In the end, I lost control of my VCORE. Ultimately, this was not a big deal, as I am in the process of building a monster. As soon as finances allow, I will finish the beast and satisfy all of my OCing desires..

 

[niemiro]

Thanks for the info here. It is interesting to hear that a UEFI update could potentially cause these problems. My new computer came with UEFI, fortunately, so I was saved this headache. But this good to know. Thanks :)

 

[GZ]

This is the first I have heard of being able to upgrade from BIOS to UEFI... Interesting... I am going to have to look into this some more...

It isn't strange that Windows recognized the UEFI as a new motherboard... I would have counted on a reinstall... The whole "architecture" of UEFI is different than BIOS... and the MoBo ID string may have changed as well. UEFI interacts with Windows differently than a BIOS, so you may have other issues.

Thanks for the rundown!

 

[James7679]

Update;
So no major software issues. Windows seems fine. My boot times are substantially faster. New problem though, cpu fan won't run. Just reads zero rpm. Good thing I have four other fans in th case. I may flash back though. This is slightly annoying.

 

[Britton30]

With my very poor experience with a gigabyte board I'm not surprised they fluffed UEFI. They seem to have been a hold out in putting UEFI on their new boards.
Hopefully you can flash back with no more damage.

 

[bassfisher6522]

My question; what are the advantages of UEFI BIOS vs the regular BIOS.

 

[GZ]

There are a few, including...

Faster boot times
Native support for >2TB drives
Streamlined GUI
Ease of use

The problem with the BIOS is that it is ancient compared to modern PC technology. The BIOS has been used since the dawn of the PC...

 

[bassfisher6522]

Well then, I'm looking forward to a new mobo with the new UEFI BIOS. TY

 

[GZ]

Well... It is still a little buggy... Even though EFI is not new, it has not seen widespread implementation until recently.

I am wholly satisfied with the boards that I have recently used that implement UEFI.

Be prepared to update the UEFI firmware regularly, though... On my ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe, I went through 3 revisions before my RAM issues were completely resolved (Random BSODs, Base incompatability, etc).

 

[Britton30]

My question; what are the advantages of UEFI BIOS vs the regular BIOS.

This is the slick looking UEFI interface on my ASUS P8Z68-V Pro board. This also demonstrates the function of taking a screenshot of your settings. :grin1: