According to an anonymous MSI spokesperson, MSI is planning to ditch the BIOS and adopt UEFI by the end of this year, starting with its Sandy Bridge motherboards. It could be the start of such a shift by other vendors and while it has no doubt played a big part for enthusiasts, it has been something that the average user is unfamiliar with.
UEFI (universal extensible firmware interface) is a continuation of Intel’s original EFI project, which was designed to replace the BIOS with a user-friendly point-and-click interface, as well as addressing many other troublesome areas of the PC’s legacy.
The MSI spokesperson said that the first new products using UEFI will be based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, and will range from entry-level motherboards to high-end solutions. This should be expected, as UEFI is a continuation of Intel’s original EFI project designed to replace the clunky, elderly BIOS interface, and to address other problems that have plagued PCs for years, including hard drive storage limits beyond 2 TB.
But upgrading to UEFI isn’t as simple as flashing the old BIOS with the new interface. “A UEFI system is generally bigger than a traditional BIOS,” the spokesperson said, “and most of the on-board ROM is not that big, so you can’t just flash UEFI into a traditional BIOS board.”
But MSI believes that UEFI is the way to go, the next evolutionary step even though UEFI still needs some work. The company may be right, especially as consumers require more and more Storage space than what BIOS can currently handle.
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