For all the strides PCs make toward greater speed and sophistication, hitting that delete key after startup always feels like stepping back in time. The age-old and seemingly timeless BIOS lives on, having been retired in only a minority of systems—Macs being among the notable trailblazers. Could the arrival of Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs and assorted platforms in 2011 finally see the end of the BIOS in enthusiast machines?
I can’t answer that question for sure, but the latest story over at Sweclockers.com is definitely encouraging. Those crafty Swedes have gotten access to an Asus Sandy Bridge motherboard with a UEFI interface, which brings overclocking and low-level system controls into the 21st century. They’ve even posted a video of the interface, although unless you speak Swedish, you’ll only get to look at the pictures:
Besides quicker boot times and various design enhancements, UEFI will replace the BIOS interface with a fancy, high-resolution, mouse-controlled UI. From the looks of it, what you’ll be stepping into will resemble Asus’ power-management Windows utilities. At least in this particular example, I like what I see. I only hope we see at least some consistency and ease of use across different UEFI UIs on different products… those Taiwanese motherboard makers aren’t always known for tasteful and easy-to-navigate interfaces.
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