Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (“UEFI”) can be thought of as a tiny operating system that resides on your PC’s motherboard. Tiny operating systems for a piece of hardware are called “firmware.” UEFI firmware provides critical functions to your PC: initializing and booting the processor, detecting and training memory, configuring data buses and motherboard peripherals, monitoring and controlling core hardware, changing low-level settings, and helping Windows® communicate with your PC components. UEFI replaces an older and simpler standard called “BIOS,” though many people today still inf
Compared to the older “legacy” BIOS firmware, UEFI firmware offers many new and useful features, including: Greatly improved security
Fully specified interfaces that ensure interoperability and testability
Dependable firmware updates from the internet with minimal user interaction
Support for hard drives larger than 2.2TB
Support for many new types of PC hardware, including NVMe SSD boot support
Windows® Secure Boot for malware prevention
Faster shutdown, startup, sleep, and resume times To fully leverage the benefits of UEFI, only UEFI Mode will be officially supported starting from the AMD R
The PC industry’s transition from BIOS to UEFI is still ongoing, and not all hardware in the market, especially older hardware, understands how to communicate with UEFI firmware. For this reason, motherboards with UEFI firmware can toggle between two modes: UEFI Mode and CSM Mode. Compatibility Support Module (“CSM”) mode emulates some aspects of the older BIOS standard by disabling many of the advanced performance / security / reliability features of UEFI Mode. In other words: compatibility with older hardware is maximized, but modern hardware like the AMD Radeon™ Graphics may lose access to