Intel Announces a BIOS Implementation Test Suite 66
Josh Triplett writes "Intel announced the release of a BIOS Implementation Test Suite (BITS), a bootable pre-OS environment based on GNU GRUB2 that tests how well (or how badly) your BIOS has configured your platform hardware. BITS also includes Intel's official power management reference code, so you can override your BIOS's initialization with a known-good configuration. 'In addition to those changes to GRUB2 itself, BITS includes configuration files which build a menu exposing the various BITS functionality, including the test suites, hardware configuration, and exploratory tools. These scripts detect your system's CPU, and provide menu entries for all the available functionality on your hardware platform. You can also access all of the new commands we've added directly via the command line.'"
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we finally go to EFI or at least something that's not 20 years old now?
Re:That's not gonna fly too well with overclockers (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually simply add a CPU and memory stress test and this would be great for overclocking!
It's already got all the CPU identification stuff that overclockers need. It boots quick and off a USB drive too!
The only thing it's missing is a CPU and memory stress tester. With that you'd be able to quickly change settings, reboot and test them without having to stuff around loading a full OS.
Re:So why need a BIOS in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
BIOS does actually very little these days.
Then why does it take so frigging long to load?