Sneak peak at MSI's P45 motherboards

The EFI BIOS will become a standard, like it or not. Intel are pushing its uptake, MSI are just the first to really talk about it. There are loads more applications in EFI far and above the BIOS we all know and love these days. Circupipe looks great IMO.

Comment by lemel_uk at 8:18pm 16th May 2008

Only two fingers needed if you're using the wrist strap. Silly me!

Comment by cjagusz at 2:02pm 16th May 2008

.... How about implementing an API over SPI, using three fingers and an anti-static wrist strap as input and the PC speaker as output?

Surely that's the way forward. :-)

Comment by cjagusz at 1:27pm 16th May 2008

.... would be a ssh client in the BIOS (or available without booting the O.S.) It's just something I'd find useful.

Comment by cjagusz at 1:22pm 16th May 2008

Have never been good overclockers And the northbridge cooling leaves a lot to be desired........ im sure it was shown the circa pipe was showing a motherboard temperature much higher than any asus board with heatpipes sprawled across it...... The heat here needs to be dissapaited with a lot of fans anyway... so for all that.. you need many fans thats its trying to compensate for?

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 12:14pm 16th May 2008

baah... why not just have an empty line and script in BASH for a BIOS? :P theres only one way to find out -- and thats how it will perform. --and is it just me or are motherboards getting too expensive? i mean, a c2d e6750 is much cheaper than the ATX mobo its going in!! crazy! damn americans and brits gettin all the goodies while us aussies here have to friggin pay

Comment by thegreat0mi at 10:32am 16th May 2008

.... then I don't see how a graphical BIOS can be faster than a character based one.

Re: ASUS boards.... I like them too - er, except for the awful experience I had with the P5N32E-SLI PLUS - so it was interesting to see the article on Toms Hardware about Gigabyte accusing Asus of lying about their motherboards and using cheap solid caps. :-(

If you don't know it's (the BIOS) there then you probably don't need to pay it a visit, but hey.... if you do break something.... there are plenty of people happy to charge for their time. :-)

Comment by cjagusz at 8:38am 16th May 2008

Souldnt this and shouldnt that? I would say its down to each user to decide if they want to go into the BIOS. Its their kit and their money if they mess it up. But to say they shouldnt? No, how would anyone ever learn if they all followed your point? Making the interface graphical just makes the whole process a bit more user friendly for the more inexperienced users, and possibly a better layout and ease of use for the pro's.

Comment by pveater at 7:33am 16th May 2008

if people are scared to go into the BIOS, they shouldn't be going in there anyway. only experienced users should need to use the BIOS to change anything, or inexperienced users who have been directed to do so. the BIOS can be a very dangerous tool to mess with, and EFI, if it maintains the functionality of the BIOS will just cause more users to tinker who shouldn't be killing their system.

Comment by rickykemp at 2:21am 16th May 2008

My point was not that you couldn't fit a large cooler, but how hard it would be and likely to cause acidental damage due to large heatpipes on three sides. As for the S-ATA issue, again I know there are others but my point is why put something somewhere that is most likely to render it useless. If these little details go begging then what else is likely to just be ill thought through? Give me and ASUS board any day, even if some of them do have the same issue with the layouts. I think this will be a bad board when compared to other tax slips (P45... get it? lol) or even current P35 based boards. But thanks for the response guys especially without getting insulting like some others on here. It keeps it interesting not hearing the same comments over and over.

Comment by PokerMuppet at 12:31am 16th May 2008

i think that a new system to replace BIOS will only help. it will scare people much less the first time they open it up, and hopefully make the realm of computer matinence and upgrading less exclusive so that home users can do some more work themselves. and i think that EFI would be much faster and smoother than modern BIOS's are; the BIOS does not know how to manage your systems unused processign cycles, as such your processor is at 70%-100% load while in BIOS, so a more advanced system that hopefully can manage those cycles would be quicker because the processor would be working on it alone and not calculating empty cycles.

Comment by yougotkicked at 10:39pm 15th May 2008

Motherboard: Yes, very pretty. Dig those colours. How long before a gang of magpies - or whichever bird likes 'pretty' things - nest in it? I doubt a graphic intensive BIOS will be a good idea since the likelyhood is that it'll be sluggish and annoying for experienced users. Even some character based BIOS configuration screens have become sluggish. Character based BIOS screens could be made easier with basic and advanced modes which determine what is available to change, but this will irritate experienced users if such BIOSes don't remember how they were last used. A lot of people are not even aware that the BIOS exists. A graphical BIOS is not going to encourage more people to become gamers, nevermind hardcore gamers. Someone who uses a PC for its applications isn't suddenly going to spend more time in the BIOS because it looks nice. Something that might help people realise a PC can be good for games would be some more honest salespeople/advertising. How many people purchase budget PCs (or laptops) with integrated graphics chipsets and then give up on games when they discover everything runs so badly?.... but then again, it's cheaper and easier for most people to just buy a console. Finally, do we really want the BIOS to be easy to access and use? Won't it just encourage people who have no idea what they're doing to break things?.... as they're unlikely to have purchased the kind of boards which recover easily from botched settings changes. It's all very messy. Leave everything as it is and try to avoid dressing up in so much fancy copper.

Comment by cjagusz at 7:00pm 15th May 2008

"as you can see by the 2x S-ATA port that will be rendered useless by even a small half descent graphics card for example." - PokerMuppet You should look more closely, there are six purple SATA ports located on the edge of the board at 90 degrees and I dont think those 2 will be unulable as they sit behind the second graphics card. Also if the new BIOS catches on (which it should) then there won't be a problem IMO.

Comment by Sammyd3mon at 6:37pm 15th May 2008

Check the gallery - you'd be surprised the size of HSF you can fit without Circupipe getting in the way...

Comment by Sifter3000 at 5:27pm 15th May 2008

I wouldn't go near a board with such a large protuding heatpipe arrangment right next to the CPU housing. Especially with it snaking all over the place. The layout is rubbish too, as you can see by the 2x S-ATA port that will be rendered useless by even a small half descent graphics card for example. Where is the common sense in these people? As for the new interface for the bios. Yes, it may be slightly nicer to look at. Yes, it may be even slightly easier to use for N00bs... oh, wait, until they look at any other board and then they are back to being n00bs again. If you are going to learn something, learn it properly and from what is the standard. Learning to drive can be difficult for some people, but learning to drive on a closed circuit isn't the answer either, and no matter what you do there are just some people who shouldn't be driving anything more than a 1.1ltr automatic if they are driving at all! (HINT...HINT!!!)

Comment by PokerMuppet at 5:12pm 15th May 2008

Thank you, Well said, Well, said... I think that is one of the best points that i've ever read on the news section!!... and i think that the all new graphical interface may make it welcoming to new people, which would encourage !!more!! people to become Hardcore PC Gamers!!... maybe then we might get Gran Turismo 5 on PC hey!!. (when sony give up on consoles that is...)

Comment by NikoBellic at 5:02pm 15th May 2008

I wouldn't go near a board with such a large protuding heatpipe arrangment right next to the CPU housing. Es[ecially with it snaking all over the place. The layout is rubbish too, as you can see by the 2x S-ATA port that will be rendered useless by even a small half descent graphics card. Where is the common sense in these people?

Comment by PokerMuppet at 4:59pm 15th May 2008

but alot of people who are new to computing can find the bios quite a scary thing with loads of options which mean nothing too them if its done well a graphical bios could be a step in the right direction

Comment by andrew_girdler at 4:26pm 15th May 2008

Hmm replacing the humble BIOS with something graphical - might be a step too far and that's speaking as someone that bought a MSI board a month ago.

Comment by KHenry_07 at 4:15pm 15th May 2008

Needs more cowbell

Comment by Grotmonkey at 4:09pm 15th May 2008

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