Best Buy For a 1-GPU Upgrade (ASUS Z87-K vs. Z87-C vs. Z87-A)

By PGHammer
in Hardware Hangout

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Grand Master

PGHammer

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The tags say it all - looking at an upgrade to Haswell (specifically, i5-4670K), and have it down to one of three ASUS motherboards (all in the topic).  Multi-GPU is not in the plans (too pricey still).

 

Other than my system RAM, everything will lateral to it from what I have (GPU and sound are both PCI-E - no PCI cards are in my current setup - all drives are SATA).

 

There is one possible wrinkle - my GTX550Ti is, as far as I know, not a so-called UEFI-ready model - will I have issues with the UEFI in any of the three motherboards?

Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

The tags say it all - looking at an upgrade to Haswell (specifically, i5-4670K), and have it down to one of three ASUS motherboards (all in the topic).  Multi-GPU is not in the plans (too pricey still).

 

Other than my system RAM, everything will lateral to it from what I have (GPU and sound are both PCI-E - no PCI cards are in my current setup - all drives are SATA).

 

There is one possible wrinkle - my GTX550Ti is, as far as I know, not a so-called UEFI-ready model - will I have issues with the UEFI in any of the three motherboards?

Best Buy is terrible and should be destroyed, whether that was even remotely related to your question or not.

 

As to the UEFI question, no.  You can use pretty much any video card with UEFI as far as I'm aware.

Grand Master

tsupersonic

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Your graphics card will work with any of those Asus Z87 motherboards. Those motherboards will have an UEFI interface, rather than a BIOS, but your graphics card would work regardless.

Grand Master

PGHammer

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Best Buy is terrible and should be destroyed, whether that was even remotely related to your question or not.

 

As to the UEFI question, no.  You can use pretty much any video card with UEFI as far as I'm aware.

Completely unrelated (the retailer, that is) - I'll be purchasing from MicroCenter - my usual source for computer parts (CPUs, motherboards, GPUs, etc.).

 

Nice to know that my GPU can make the trip - that means I can move everything that's movable - leaving only the CPU to buy.

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snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member

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I had to look up what you were saying about UEFI and I found this: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3156

 

It appears to me that the UEFI aware GPUs just contain digital signatures for secure boot. And, I guess you can be required to disable secure boot if you don't have one. News to me. I thought secure boot just required OS signatures.

Grand Master

PGHammer

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I'm puzzled about where do you get these crazy notions about hardware..

Two words - OEM pitches.  Starting with GeForce 600 series (nVidia) and HD7xxx (AMD), the "UEFI-ready" blurb has shown up in review after review of GPUs (not to mention on retail packaging materials and in their documentation).  I'm quite aware that secure boot is NOT a requirement, but an option, on Windows 8/88.1 (the only two Microsoft OSes that even support it at all), even with UEFI on the motherboard.  However, I simply wanted to be sure that I could keep my current GPU, as upgrading to a newer UEFI-supported GPU is still not an option at present (for price reasons) - I'd rather not basically be forced to upgrade due to GPU compatibility issues with the motherboard itself.  (Basically, I'm looking to avoid getting stung at the last minute.)

 

Finally, a word about Secure Boot - it has exactly diddly to do with DRM, but a lot to do with rootkit avoidance.  Some (not all) activation workarounds for previous versions of Windows were found to contain various sorts of malware, including rootkits - wasn't a rather significant number of PCs built by a non-US OEM found to be rootkitted?  I build my own desktops, and I despise rootkits and other malware - they are the most pernicious of OS banes that I have to deal with on hardware that arrives on my doorstoop.  Basically, Secure Boot is a belt, in addition to the suspenders (an additional security feature, like hardware SPI in broadband modems and routers) - you don't HAVE to use it, but there are non-DRM-related uses for it.  (The one DRM use for Secure Boot is in businesses - not individual usage - Secure Boot helps insure licensing compliance.)

Grand Master

PGHammer

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I had to look up what you were saying about UEFI and I found this: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3156

 

It appears to me that the UEFI aware GPUs just contain digital signatures for secure boot. And, I guess you can be required to disable secure boot if you don't have one. News to me. I thought secure boot just required OS signatures.

Secure Boot requires firmware signatures on anything and everything connecting to the hardware that has firmware - to avoid firmware-based rootkitting ALA Stuxnet.

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