EFI BIOS (ASUS EZ BIOS) - Intel Smart Response Technology

EFI BIOS (ASUS EZ BIOS)

The new ASUS EFI BIOS is an Extensible Firmware Interface that complies with uEFI architecture, offering a user-friendly interface that goes beyond traditional keyboard-only BIOS controls to enable a way more flexible and convenient mouse input at BIOS level. uEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a specification detailing an interface that helps hand off control of the system for the pre-boot environment (i.e. after the system is powered on, but before the operating system starts) to an operating system, such as Windows. uEFI is an interface.

It can be implemented on top of a traditional BIOS (in which case it supplants the traditional "INT" entry points into BIOS) or on top of non-BIOS implementations. End-users can navigate the new EFI BIOS (basic input/output system) with the same smoothness as their operating system. It's simply a Windows OS feel. The EZ Mode displays frequently-accessed setup info, while the Advanced Mode is for experienced performance enthusiasts that demand far more intricate system settings.

Above, screenshots of the new uEFI BIOS feature, and yes it is as impressive as it looks. So yes, the uEFI BIOS is really handy to use and easy to navigate. Next to that it makes common functions really fail proof, features like flashing a BIOS is done in a jiffy and all variables can be managed and monitored really easy. A massive improvement over the classic BIOS alright. We'll see a lot of ODMs make the move to uEFI BIOSes this year.

A twofold of new features are introduced along with the Z68 as well, the first being Intel Smart Response Technology.

Intel Smart Response Technology

A new feature introduced on the Z68 is a form of SSD caching. It is now possible to combine an HDD and an SSD with the help of Intel Smart Response Technology, you can pair them into a hybrid mode.

Basically you need to use your HDD as the primary operating system storage unit, and then an added SSD will cache the most regularly used static data. After a couple of runs the primary storage load will get cached on the SSD and will be loaded from there the next time you access it. And yes, it sounds a lot like Windows PreFetch and SuperBoost.

Here's how it works: in the BIOS you set the SATA storage configuration to RAID. You install Windows 7 on the HDD and install the SSD. Then install the storage controller software from Intel (Intel Rapid Storage Technology). Once you load up the software you'll notice a new option called 'Enable acceleration', and click it. You may now assign a cache volume size e.g. 20GB. That's pretty much all there is to it. Intel Smart Response Technology will now monitor and learn storage unit behavior and starts caching, allowing you to load from the SSD, not the primary HDD.

It is clever technology and can speed up the primary and most used data up-to 5x by making use of that SSD cache. We're not sure just yet how popular this feature will be, as you are very tied to that RAID mode setup in BIOS, leaving a lot of generic and your average end-users puzzled. Another problem is that once you have installed Windows 7 in SATA or AHCI mode, there's no way to migrate to that required RAID mode. So this only works with fresh Windows installations.

Also, and we feel this is a little trivial, once you purchase an SSD we doubt you'd still be going for an SSD/HDD combination anyway. We certainly wouldn't. But it's definitely a very creative idea. Especially if you combine this feature with a small low priced SSD you could benefit from the SSD performance increase for very little money.

If you'd like to fool around with the technology yourself, again Intel RAID mode in the BIOS must be enabled in order for Smart Response Technology to function.

We've put together a setup. Now once you already have Windows installed on SATA or in AHCI mode, you cannot switch and migrate to Intel RAID mode, you'll end up in a nightmare of blue screens (BSODs). So to get the feature working this only applies alongside a new Windows installation, that or you already have RAID mode up and running. The first thing you need to do in the BIOS is set your storage mode from IDE or AHCI to RAID. Now you install Windows. After the installation you install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software, previously know as the Matrix storage driver. We assume you installed an HDD as the primary root drive and have an SSD, currently unused but installed.

If all went well and you start up the RST software you'll notice a new function called 'Enable acceleration' like so (click thumbnails to enlarge):

As you can see, you'll get some options here. So we select our 500GB HDD with the Windows installation as the volume that needs to be accelerated. SSD wise we use a Corsair F100, now we do not want to use up all that expensive NAND flash, so we assign roughly 20GB of the SSD for caching, the rest (free space) will get its own partition and we can use that as a separate SSD drive. Click Enhanced mode and then OK.

So, after a little while you'll notice that the RST software has created a new storage array, one ~20GB partition for caching and one 75GB partition which we can format and use as SSD storage.

So caching works, we now go to Computer Management -> Disk Management and initialize and format the 75GB SSD storage. And that's all there is to it. The 20GB array now fully functions and is active as cache, plus you have a separate SSD partition fully up and running and working tremendously well.