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downside to EFI bios?

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juane414

Member
Joined
May 2, 2006
Location
Wisconsin
I was looking at some of the features of my motherboard and noticed that Gigabyte has an EFI Bios utility available called "Touch Bios" that allows you to adjust BIOS settings withing Windows. I know that most people discourage using software to overclock and recommend using the BIOS, which is what I have always preached as well. But I'm wondering... if this new EFI feature is actually changing the BIOS settings, how is that any different from accessing the BIOS by rebooting? Is there any downside to overclocking via EFI software? It would be quite convenient to use that when I'm tweaking the system. It get's annoying having to restart every time I want to try five more MHz or some minor adjustment.

Edit: Never mind... I played around with Gigabyte Touch Bios and learned that you still need to reboot the PC to apply the settings that you save to the CMOS. So it looks like you cannot use the EFI BIOS utility to overclock withing Windows. I don't really see any major advantage or disadvantage to the EFI software except that you get a different way to interact with the BIOS. Totally new look/feel and interface.
 
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I speak only for my CHV Asus motherboard. There is Ai Suite from Asus that can be used in Windows to change a number of voltages and cpu settings including the cpu speed. Then click APPLY and you are running with those changes in windows without a reboot.

You can test the cpu speed and settings without a REboot. Not sure if the settings are saved to CMOS for every succeeding boot? Did not test that out. The downside with the Ai Suite is the unreasonable voltage error warnings I got and others who have tried Ai Suite also. Then there is the time when the Ai Suite is the reason the system is no longer stable and you wind-up chasing your tail wondering why the instability.

I tried the Ai Suite one time. Did not let me overclock higher overall. When I got ready to uninstall Ai Suite, I used an UNinstaller program and Ai Suite was written in 128 places in the registry and 62 files and folders on the hard drive itself. Quite a web of entanglement.

So my one foray into overclocking from within windows, was a real under-achievement.
RGone...
 
All depends from board and software it seems. AI Suite is working in windows and you can change all settings without reboot. The same is working for me on AMD ( CHV ) and Intel ( MVG ).
On other boards some options cannot be changed without reboot like on MSI MPower reboot is requited when you change cpu ratio or some other settings. After reboot, UEFI is setting everything like you set in windows.

Even if it's working then better is to overclock in BIOS/UEFI and forget about overclocking software. It's adding unnecessary processes and sometimes it's not fully stable.
AI Suite has one good option, fan control tab which is better than BIOS settings.
 
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