Arch Linux

logos88

Member

From: Valencia

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 31

[SOLVED] What is exactly GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™?

Hi!! I'm going to buy a new PC and the GA-H87-HD3 (http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product … id=4516#sp) will be my new motherboard. My doubt is how exactly I have to install Arch on it, because it brings GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™. It's that a UEFi or a BIOS motherboard? I know it maybe is a silly question but I'm a dummy with hardware, and with that name I have became confused.

Should I install the UEFI + GPT way, or the BIOS + MBR one?

Last edited by logos88 (2013-10-01 05:27:40)

headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

Re: [SOLVED] What is exactly GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™?

http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/306/i … -bios.html

Looks to be a backup BIOS in case the first one is corrupted somehow.  The description is on the bottom on that page.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [SOLVED] What is exactly GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™?

I have a UEFI DualBIOS Gigabyte board. It's UEFI. The "DualBIOS" bit means what headkase mentioned, there's a second chip on the board containing a backup of the UEFI firmware. The reason they call it DualBIOS is because it's their trademark - they've had this feature of a backup chip already in the old BIOS days.

However, like many UEFI boards, this one has a BIOS compatibility mode - the built-in boot menu shows two entries for each device, one prefixed with UEFI and one without. So it's up to you what to use: create a GPT disk with an EFI partition and put an EFI boot manager there (gummiboot is very nice), or create a MBR disk and boot it in BIOS compatibility mode using a classic bootloader. Since it's an UEFI board, you might as well go with that.

cfr

Member

From: Cymru

Registered: 2011-11-27

Posts: 7,148

Re: [SOLVED] What is exactly GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™?

Unless you use Windows, you can also use GPT/BIOS. (Maybe also MBR/UEFI but I don't know why you would want to do that.)

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logos88

Member

From: Valencia

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED] What is exactly GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™?

Oks. Thanks for the help. I'll try a GPT partition with Windows 7, and if doesn't works I'll come back to the typical MBR

Last edited by logos88 (2013-10-01 05:26:44)