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Quick guide to configuring the UEFI on Gigabyte's 7-series LGA-1155 motherboards

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z77x-ud5h.jpgWith Gigabyte having moved entirely to UEFI on its 7-series LGA-1155 motherboards, we thought it’s about time that we put together a quick guide for those of you that are new to UEFI. There are really very few settings that you have to change in Gigabyte’s new UEFI to get your CustoMac up and running, but we also thought we’d include a few helpful tricks that will make your system work even better. So click on through and we’ll take you on a tour through the wonderful world of UEFI settings.

Let’s start with the basics. Start by getting out of the "3D BIOS" by pressing the F1 key. This will bring you to the standard UI as it’s actually much easier to change the settings that you have to make changes to here. Next, press the F7 key on the keyboard, this will load the optimized defaults settings. Click yes on the prompt and your system will be re-set to the optimized default settings. Note that all of Gigabyte’s 7-series LGA-1155 boards have AHCI enabled by default, so this one setting you don’t have to worry about changing any more.

Now we can start making a few changes. Note that if you’re using a dual-boot system, none of these settings will affect Windows 7 in any way, but we can’t say for certain what effects these settings might have in other operating systems.

UEFI_USB_settings.jpg
First, head over to Peripherals, here you want to make sure that the xHCI mode is set to Auto. In some UEFI versions this defaults to Smart Auto, but this setting doesn’t work in OS X. You also want to make sure that xHCI and EHCI Hand-off is enabled.

On the peripherals settings screen you can also configure the display settings. In the case of the example above, a discrete graphics card was used, so PEG is what you want to select under Init Display First. If you’re using the integrated Intel graphics, then you want to select IGFX here. You don’t need to make any changes to the Internal Graphics Memory Size setting here, just leave it at the default of 64MB.

UEFI_HPET.jpg
Finally, go to the Power Management options. Here the important setting is High Precision Event Timer, although it should be enabled by default. A little tip here is to disable Wake on LAN, as it seems to cause a reboot after a couple of seconds if you select to shut down your system from within OS X. This might not be a viable option for everyone, but it’s the easy way of solving the reboot issue.

As for any of the other UEFI settings, well, they don’t have to be changed to have a fully working system. You do want to set up the correct boot drive under BIOS Features and note that you can’t set the boot drive to one with the UEFI prefix for OS X, as you won’t be able to boot into the OS if this is set, instead you need to select the legacy option which is usually listed as something like "P0: Drive name" if you’re using the standard Intel SATA ports.

Hopefully this will make life easier for everyone when it comes to setting up the UEFI options on your Gigabyte 7-series LGA-1155 motherboard.

Update: After some user comments it has come to light that Gigabyte has apparently solved the issues with having to enable EIST and Turbo Boost. These can now be left on Auto and there's no need to make any changes here, as long as you're using the latest UEFI release from Gigabyte. So far I've only tested on a Sandy Bridge CPU on a Z77 motherboard, but unlike some of the reports here, I didn't experience any performance drops by enabling either option. Do note that EIST might throttle the CPU speed as EIST is short for Enhanced Intel Speed Step and as such is a power saving feature for when the CPU is not being utilized. If I find anything different on my Ivy Bridge system I'll post a further update here.

One more thing I'd like to point out is the fact that this guide does not apply to overclocked system, it's a basic guide to get you up and running with minimal fuss. A lot of things can be tweaked to further enhance the performance of your system, but that's something we'll follow up with in a separate guide.

Update 2: Some non-K Ivy Bridge CPUs, including the i7-3770 need to set VT-D to disabled in order to boot successfully. The boot flag to get around not having that option in BIOS is dart=0.
 

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What should we do if we want to use Wake On Lan?
 
Just an idea, but what if someone could create a guide on how to migrate an existing BIOS installation to a UEFI installation (what kexts to delete, etc.)?

I'm interested in installing UEFI on my z68-mx-ud2h-b3, but I really don't know what needs to be kept and deleted, so I'm holding off.
 
Thanks for the guide. I'm using this same Mobo. I'm getting an issue with ML where the mouse drivers are not reloaded after the computer wakes from sleep and it causes my mouse (Cyborg R.A.T. 7) to misbehave (not highlighting menu items, not allowing proper screenshot function). I have the Cyborg software installed which works fine until the computer goes to sleep. Once it wakes up, I have to restart the machine in order to obtain full functionality again. Any ideas? Thanks!
 
Just an idea, but what if someone could create a guide on how to migrate an existing BIOS installation to a UEFI installation (what kexts to delete, etc.)?

I'm interested in installing UEFI on my z68-mx-ud2h-b3, but I really don't know what needs to be kept and deleted, so I'm holding off.

Sure, we can have a look see what we can do, but it'll take a little while to put together, but I have a Z68 board that I can use for this.
 
Thanks for the guide. I'm using this same Mobo. I'm getting an issue with ML where the mouse drivers are not reloaded after the computer wakes from sleep and it causes my mouse (Cyborg R.A.T. 7) to misbehave (not highlighting menu items, not allowing proper screenshot function). I have the Cyborg software installed which works fine until the computer goes to sleep. Once it wakes up, I have to restart the machine in order to obtain full functionality again. Any ideas? Thanks!

Sounds like something unique to your mouse. Admittedly I only have a pair of Logitech mice, but neither (one gaming mouse, one older wireless model) have problems waking the system from sleep, or working after sleep and that is on two different systems. Might be worth checking with MadCatz as it seems to be a driver issue of some kind.
 
i have UD5H motherboard and auto-restart problem seems to appear only when usb3 ports are used, independently with sleep wake on lan options :D
 
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