Hardware Discussions

[jacobvandy]

More on this, the single most fantastic thing about Intel's new 7 Series chipsets, in an article tomorrow. Yes this is for Ivy Bridge, but that's still under embargo for another couple of weeks.

[Natedog51]

That is very interesting. Does this mean Intel branded boards will have all the frills of the aftermarket? Or just a new bios for their chipset's?

[jacobvandy]

The documentation I have says Visual BIOS is on two Intel boards based on the Z77 (high-end) chipset. Just about everyone else is doing something similar with their new Z77-based boards (mouse-enabled GUI BIOS), but nothing I've seen comes anywhere close to how slick this is. Well, I think Asus and Gigabyte did it last year, but that was gimmicky and primitive compared to what is essentially Intel''s Extreme Overclocking Utility that you can load up before Windows boots. I mean look at this, it's horrible:

[dolynick]

That Gigabyte 3D BIOS does look gimicky. The new Asus ones I've used seem a lot better done than that. Hard to tell how they stack up to the Intel one you're referring to just from the pic but for the most part I think the new Asus UEFI is pretty good.

-dolynick

[jacobvandy]

I must have come down with the flu recently, 'cause today really felt like crap and spent most of the day in bed... Article's not done yet, but I did put together this video so you can sort of see what it looks like in motion. Yes it's bad quality, but you get the idea. I'll have this and more not-so-blurry images in the article.

[jwhx]

While it certainly looks cool, what's the point of it? Was the simple menu system of old not cutting it anymore?

[Synchronous Failure]

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jwhx wrote:
While it certainly looks cool, what's the point of it? Was the simple menu system of old not cutting it anymore?

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The simple menu system of old was far from simple. I love these UEFI BIOSes. It was about time we advanced to something new. If anything it'll help out the tons of newbies who want to overclock but have no freaking idea.

[jacobvandy]

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jwhx wrote:
While it certainly looks cool, what's the point of it? Was the simple menu system of old not cutting it anymore?

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What's the point of sticking with the same crappy text-based, keyboard-navigated menu system we've been using for like 20-30 years? It's soo slow and convoluted, doesn't give you a description for half of the options, and it certainly can't give you visual aids or help newbies overclock. The convenience of mouse navigation alone makes me dread ever having to go into the BIOS of an older mobo ever again...

[jacobvandy]

Yay, article is done: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/Intel_Z77_Chipset_DZ77GA-70K_Motherboard_Overview/

[Organized_Chaos]

good read. I hope the higher end intel boards measure up to the other manufacturers' high end boards. Anything for more competition. Really liking the GUI bios too, that will be a nice change. Definitely seems a lot nicer than the ones that came out last year.

[LORD ORION]

Holy crap, that is so awesome I will even post in the FS forums to say so.

[FiSH]

I'ma month late in seeing this. Very cool BIOS. Is the feature limited to high end boards? Not seeing any on the market yet with 'Visual BIOS.'