I had a gigabyte board I spent almost $350 on (really nice, it supported Tri SLI/CrossFire X setups) whicht he UEFI was so crappy Windows wouldn't boot when it was enabled. It bluescreened just booting off the DVD. Also, Linux would KP. The board wasn't defective, the UEFI bios was that crappy. Too bad, it was one of the highest performing boards. It could do 64GB RAM, had 5 PCI-E 16-lane Slots (3 @ 16-lane/2.0, 2 @ 8-lane) + 2 1-lane PCI-E.
SATA 6.0Gbps, and had 12 SATA ports + 4 eSATA, all the ports were USB 3.0 and the board has the 990FX chipset. I ended up giving it to a friend with my dual Radeon HD 5770 because I needed GPT support, and the board sucked so bad I couldn't do GPT since it would crash on boot.
It was a common issue. the EFI implimentation just sucked. I don't think Windows 8 would run either on it. It seems to be the buggiest board Gigabyte made. I am back running with a (from the 3rd RMA) ASRock Extreme3 board, that (knock on wood) is still going after 7 months now.
I ended up upgrading the system with an FX-8120, and with the water cooling system i received today, I proceeded to overclock to 4.4Ghz easily. It beats out a Core i7 3.4Ghz 2600 (I think it's 3.4, I will have to check). The ASRock with the new cooler/etc.. his 4.12pts on Cinebench for CPU, OpenGL is 69.31 with the Radeon HD 6850. It's better than nothing, but the gigabyte board did better than that. Also provided better voltages. (Geekbench was almost 14k points btw, 64-bit, beat some 6-core Xeons)
The one downside about EFI is some applications make you pay extra to support something that is now expected to ship on PCs (Acronis, I am looking at you. don't sell software then proceed to tell people they have to pay $50 to upgrade to a plus pack for GPT support)
Either way, yes, I have seen EFI be suckily implimented. Apple's first-gen EFI systems were that way. Especially the Mac Pro. That should've been EFI64 minimum. The EFI specs existed at the time. Apple should've used it.
That said, the Mac Pro of that vintage is nothing to scoff at. If you don't like it, sell it yourself. eBay still fetches a pretty penny for them. After that, go buy yourself a nice laptop that you would like (how about a 2010 17" MacBook Pro?)
Don't balk at free. Aka looking a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, give to a family member that probably runs on a Pentium 4 or P ///.
The Mac Pro would be good for Linux or Windows 7 support. I can imagine that that Mac Pro would beat my FX-8120 even overclocked. And it probably has extra power on the side.
SATA 6.0Gbps, and had 12 SATA ports + 4 eSATA, all the ports were USB 3.0 and the board has the 990FX chipset. I ended up giving it to a friend with my dual Radeon HD 5770 because I needed GPT support, and the board sucked so bad I couldn't do GPT since it would crash on boot.
It was a common issue. the EFI implimentation just sucked. I don't think Windows 8 would run either on it. It seems to be the buggiest board Gigabyte made. I am back running with a (from the 3rd RMA) ASRock Extreme3 board, that (knock on wood) is still going after 7 months now.
I ended up upgrading the system with an FX-8120, and with the water cooling system i received today, I proceeded to overclock to 4.4Ghz easily. It beats out a Core i7 3.4Ghz 2600 (I think it's 3.4, I will have to check). The ASRock with the new cooler/etc.. his 4.12pts on Cinebench for CPU, OpenGL is 69.31 with the Radeon HD 6850. It's better than nothing, but the gigabyte board did better than that. Also provided better voltages. (Geekbench was almost 14k points btw, 64-bit, beat some 6-core Xeons)
The one downside about EFI is some applications make you pay extra to support something that is now expected to ship on PCs (Acronis, I am looking at you. don't sell software then proceed to tell people they have to pay $50 to upgrade to a plus pack for GPT support)
Either way, yes, I have seen EFI be suckily implimented. Apple's first-gen EFI systems were that way. Especially the Mac Pro. That should've been EFI64 minimum. The EFI specs existed at the time. Apple should've used it.
That said, the Mac Pro of that vintage is nothing to scoff at. If you don't like it, sell it yourself. eBay still fetches a pretty penny for them. After that, go buy yourself a nice laptop that you would like (how about a 2010 17" MacBook Pro?)
Don't balk at free. Aka looking a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, give to a family member that probably runs on a Pentium 4 or P ///.
The Mac Pro would be good for Linux or Windows 7 support. I can imagine that that Mac Pro would beat my FX-8120 even overclocked. And it probably has extra power on the side.