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Does any one manufacturer stand out, or are they all much for muchness?
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Does any one manufacturer stand out, or are they all much for muchness?
Assuming you mean UEFI then any company that is willing to remove the "Fast & Furious" theme and add actual useful help with explanations of what a feature is and why you may or may not want it... they would get my vote!
If you mean actual BIOS for the good old days then I was always an AMI fan.
I liked the old Award BIOS that came with my Pentium, K6/2, and Athlon/AthlonXP mobos.
I don't like UEFI, they seem to be a triumph of style over substance, and apart from setting fan curves, I much prefer the older interface.
As long as it works properly, I don't really care.
Can't say I've had much experience with different BIOS, the one i was using before was from 2008, current one is a Gigabyte UEFI and even though I've got nothing to judge it against it's a bit naff.
Not that it's all that buggy it's just a bit confusing with duplicated settings and missing/confusing/wrong help text, maybe that's common for AM4 BIOS though what with manufactures BIOS settings being in once place and AMD CBS BIOS settings being in another, IDK.
Always gone ASUS but have used ASRock, MSI, gigabyte and was impressed with the UEFI.
I found they are all similar BIOS/UEFI apart from some features tied to mobo's and looks/layouts. The reality is, once set up, I don't need to use it !
If you ask about the motherboard manufacturers, not the actual BIOS makers:
1) ASUS would have to make useful explanations for the options to get my full marks.
2)MSI is coming as a close second, although the "Fast and Furious" mentioned by SciFi is taking over.
3) I did not have a chance to work extensively on Gigabyte offering since Intel Z77 (2012), so I cannot rate the current ones. Back in the days, it was great.
Assuming you mean motherboard manufacturers it has to be Asus for me. I have had Asus, MSI, Asrock, DFI, Epox and Gigabyte boards and have preferred the Asus layout over all the others. My previous board was a Asus Z87 Maximus VI Hero and it's bios was brilliant. It was well laid out with everything under the sections you would expect them to be. I then switched to Gigabyte and the early Z390 Aorus Pro bios was a mess and a big step down from Asus bios layouts. It has gotten better with the new layout but in my opinion they still have a long way to go to catch up Asus. This will be my last Gigabyte board.
Honestly my experience with the first UEFI bios I've encountered on the Asus makes me believe there are much better out there. I miss the old Award bios, it was far easier and simpler to understand without all the flashy dross UEFI seems to have brought. Why any motherboard manufacturer thinks wasting the limited space available to add an awful GUI is beyond me.
Pre UEFI were easier to use. My current AMI UEFI is a PITA.
I'm pretty impressed with Asrocks BIOS
But frankly...HPs UEFI BIOS is pretty rock solid...
Asrock for me, and I don't currently own an Asrock board.
Asus is fine, as is Gigabyte (if a wee bit laggy to use). MSI BIOS sucks the big one.
Msi for me. Easy to use. I like the way you can update the bios before even installing the CPU, all you need is the motherboard, a power supply, and the new bios on a usb stick in the correct format!
Pretty happy with the Asus BIOS on my current and last boards.
Only other UEFI BIOS board I've used is the Gigabyte board in my HTPC. Which is pretty bad tbh, especially the "3D BIOS" mode which is painful to use (click on something, wait a minute for it to respond). Wasn't necessary and really should have been removed to improve performance, anything not necessary shouldn't be included. Even the standard UEFI seemed to lack features.
I always liked the AMI BIOS rather than the Award ones, but the new UEFI BIOS's all seem to be similar from what I have seen. I don't overclock, they just need to be easy to use for the other stuff.
Expect you would like the Dell Optiplex EUFI. Functional, systematic, easily navigated with a keyboard and help messages that are actually helpful. The Inspirons, not so much. Dumbed down HP rip off. The Chinese OEMs are all a distracting mess of search and click and search again, IMO.Quote:
Originally Posted by SciFi
Asus for me... but that's only because they're the boards I've recently used for whatever reason
For me I like msi although I'm using an asus atm, not a huge lot between them tho.
Considering you mean the UEFI, I like Asus, I have no issues with MSI's. I hate from the bottom of my heart any Gigbyte software especially their UEFI BIOS.
Before they left the motherboard market I always liked Intel BIOS and Visual BIOS UEFI which now can be only found on NUCs. Also the AMI WinBIOS was up there.
These days Asus and ASRock UEFI.
Asrock 1st, then MSI, Then Asus. Asus has this weird mouse moves really slow problem. Asus also doesn't document their options really well. Asrock is the easiest and MSI's just works great. I'm talking experience with Z490's and X570's and B550's so the recent stuff. I presently own three Asrocks, Three Asus and two MSI. To be fair. All are stable when configured properly and Asus has the most complex and adjustable bios if you have to tweak every last ram timing voltage setting etc. My latest Asus ROG Strix B550G Gaming Wifi is the fastest boot in the west. Power button to Windows Hello fully logged in at under 5 seconds with a 5950X on a Samsung 980 Pro.