I have two Gigabyte GA-7PESH2 server motherboards that I have modified using help from this great forum.
One is going to be used for a server, that one I successfully added the Intel RSTe UEFI, so I can boot from a sata drive while it is in RAID mode. The other one is going to be used for my primary workstation, and I added NVME support so I can boot from an Intel 750 series drive.
Here’s the issue now. The boards have an AST2300 onboard video/bmc. While in UEFI-only mode, this device is always the primary output and my Nvida GTX 1060 isn’t initialized until the OS starts. On a couple of occasions, the post has actually frozen in this config. If I go into the bios and change the video rom to csm/legacy, the Nvidia card becomes the default and I see the post on the Nvidia-connected monitor.
There is an option in the bios for “preferred graphics” and I have it set to “offboard” but it seems to ignore this while in uefi-only mode. There doesn’t seem to be a way to disable the onboard graphics entirely.
This may seem like nit-picking, and I will leave it in csm if there are no other choices, but the post takes a bit longer.
What would happen if I removed the AST GOP drivers from the bios?(there are two listed)
Would the Nvidia card become the default output, or would there simply be no POST screen on any display?
I looked and AMIBCP thinking that there may be a hidden setting that would help, but I could find none. I also considered updating the vbios / GOP drivers as AST has newer versions but I am nt sure specifically how updating the vbios would affect the BMC on the board, aka the IPMI.
I decided to try removing the AST Gop drivers from the bios all together, the result was a beep code and failure to boot entirely while in UEFI-only mode.
I reset the bios to defaults so that the Video Oprom would load in legacy mode, and now it no longer sees my "Windows Boot Manager" on the NVME drive… dangit, what the heck?
There are no secure boot options in the bios and no TPM on the board.
edit: on second thought, it could have been the bios flash that created the issue seeing the OS on the NVME drive… any idea why this would be though?
So you actually got nvme added to your bios? Can someone share a tutorial on how to do that?
Yes, I did, and it’s working perfectly!
It’s a long thread, but there is a lot of useful info here:
[Guide] How to get full NVMe support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS