What does it mean when a video card is UEFI-Ready?

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Sharks445

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Mar 10, 2014
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At the computer store I saw some video cards and many of them said "UEFI-Ready" on the box. does this mean that video cards that are non-UEFI cannot run on a BIOS Motherboard?
My board is UEFI instead of the legacy. does this mean I can only buy the UEFI compatible cards?

thankfully, on the UEFI setting, I can switch from UEFI to the traditional legacy mode. Do I need to do this when buying a non-UEFI compatible card?
 
Solution
photonboy
If Windows is installed in UEFI mode (motherboard and graphics card/iGPU must be UEFI) and you try to add a non-UEFI graphics card it probably won't boot. You have to reinstall Windows to change from UEFI to Legacy or vice versa you can't just change that in the BIOS.

There's no issue installing Windows but if the motherboard AND graphics card aren't UEFI compatible it will install in Legacy mode.

I'll repeat, the main compatibility issue is if you install Windows in UEFI mode (which you might do with just a CPU and integrated GPU that is UEFI) then shut down and switch to a non-UEFI card it likely won't boot.

(It's also hard to tell if you're actually in UEFI mode. The C-drive would be GPT format, not MBR.)

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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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If Windows is installed in UEFI mode (motherboard and graphics card/iGPU must be UEFI) and you try to add a non-UEFI graphics card it probably won't boot. You have to reinstall Windows to change from UEFI to Legacy or vice versa you can't just change that in the BIOS.

There's no issue installing Windows but if the motherboard AND graphics card aren't UEFI compatible it will install in Legacy mode.

I'll repeat, the main compatibility issue is if you install Windows in UEFI mode (which you might do with just a CPU and integrated GPU that is UEFI) then shut down and switch to a non-UEFI card it likely won't boot.

(It's also hard to tell if you're actually in UEFI mode. The C-drive would be GPT format, not MBR.)

 
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rrozema

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Feb 12, 2015
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Most motherboards will automatically switch to legacy mode when a non-uefi component, like for example your non-UEFI-Ready video card, is detected. But the real question you should ask yourself is: do you want to run a legacy mode system?

There's 1 thing especially that would require you to run in UEFI mode: harddisks larger than 2TB need to be formatted in GPT format to use their full capacity instead of the legacy MBR format. Windows 7 and up can read and write both MBR and GPT formatted disks for any disk but the startup disk. The startup disk can only be in GPT format if your motherboard runs in UEFI mode. So if your startup disk is >2TB, you'll need to install Windows in UEFI mode to use the startup disk's full capacity. You can install Windows on a disk > 2TB when you format the disk as MBR, but any space over 2TB on this startup disk will not be accessible. And no, you can not access it either by creating a 2nd partition. The remainder of the disk is completely unusable.
 
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