First Look: Extensible Firmware Interface

MSI’s first EFI trial

Even though we have seen an MSI motherboard being used with an AMI EFI BIOS last year, we have only now have been informed that MSI has begun trialling more motherboards kitted out with EFI BIOSs.

Richard Stewart, UK Marketing Manager at MSI told us that “MSI will start to phase EFI into its next generation motherboard platform, and will allow much easier accessibility of motherboard BIOS systems. The ability to use a GUI and mouse can only encourage users to attempt to unlock the full potential of today’s modern motherboards. Even at this early beta stage we have seen excellent OC potential using current generation of MSI motherboards.”

From the looks of things, everything should become far more intuitive – pictures can finally accompany text for example, which will help to give users a more fundamental understanding of what doors each of the user’s required options are hidden behind.

Given the necessary LAN and Internet connection, in addition to the usual Core Centre hardware tweaking, MSI is planning to enable many more features in its EFI BIOSs, including a live update option, along with instant messaging and streaming audio/video capabilities.


For those of us that are used to navigating the conventional BIOS using the arrow keys, you’ve no doubt already developed lightning fast fingers like myself; however the use of the mouse should make it far more intuitive for a wider audience, and no longer should we have to sit and wait, holding down the "+" button, watching that number slowly rise. Instead just click the option, drag down the scroll bar and select the value of choice, just like you would in any modern operating system.


The more flexible layout should also give the manufacturers a chance to give us more detail on exactly what each option does, because, currently, we’re often limited to a small strip down the right hand side that typically offers a very limited explanation. For both budding and even seasoned enthusiasts discovering new options, it should enable a far greater understanding of the boards’ features and capabilities.

MSI is only trialing in the Asian market for the time being, so it could be even longer before we get the option over here – that's also providing the push to Windows Vista x64 happens faster as well and, given the price of 4GB of memory and other benefits associated with a 64-bit operating environment, it could easily be a jump worth making.

We hope to have a look at an EFI-enabled motherboard in the near future...