Observations on intel vs AMD

[Doug Clark]

Roderick,

Yes -  the BIOS configuration utility is visible with this non GPO card - what you get when you press the DEL key while it is booting.  That utility is completely graphical with mouse support.

You can also press F11 on boot-up to get a list of "drives" to boot from.  This list is a subset of the drives recognized by the BIOS.  On this machine you "suggest" which mode, UEFI or CSM, you want to use by:
1) configuring a UEFI/CSM or CSM/UEFI in the main BIOS settings menu/utility,
2) picking a drive that is listed as UEFI, or a drive that does not have UEFI next to its name.

So every drive on the machine is listed twice in the main BIOS screen: once with UEFI label and once without.  Since the F11 boot device list only lists a small number of drives you have to configure in the BIOS utility which drives will appear in the boot-device list that is displayed with F11 at boot.  That all works with the non-GOP graphics card.

As an aside - this means that to use the new AOS UEFI boot manager you have to install that on a drive that you will boot as UEFI.  To use AirBoot you have to put that on a drive that is listed as non-UEFI.   So if you want to dual boot to two operating systems, one using UEFI and one using Legacy or CSM, you would have to put those operating systems on separate drives and use the BIOS supplied F11 boot menu.

By contrast, on my Lenovo T530 I originally installed AOS 5.01 and Win 7 as dual boot on the same drive.  When AOS 5.1 came out I replaced the AOS 5.02 installation with AOS 5.1 installation.  To move between the two I go into the BIOS in the Startup section and change the Boot First entry from to LEGACY FIRST  to get boot Win7, or UEFI FIRST to boot AOS 5.1.  When I boot LEGACY first I get the Airboot menu (from the previous AOS 5.02 install) and chose Windows 7.  When I boot UEFI first I get the new AOS boot manager menu and chose AOS.  If I chose AOS from the AirBoot menu it will boot into AOS, but with lots of errors about not being able to load drivers.

My conclusion from building this Ryzen 5 machine is computers are a LOT more complex now than the used to be when I did my last build.

As for booting on the Ryzen 5 machine with the AOS installer media plugged in adn the non-GPO grahics card.  (I am doing this from memory)
You get the logo,
Then you get the boot from hard drive or install media (or whatever that choice is)
Then you get the Boot with defaults or Configure choice.  If you pick configure that screen shows up and works - meaning you can configure stuff.
If you choose boot with defaults, or you configure and exit, the screen goes blank. 

[Doug Clark]

Remy,
O&O ShutUo 10++ may be better than AME.  It looks like is has more choices for configuration than AME.  The AME system is pretty locked down and they have made a number of choices on what to include and not include based on what they think it safe. I don't know if those choices are the right ones.  It appears there are a number of "systems" available that do similar things for Win 10 and Win 11.

JTA
I am pleased with AME, but I don't game at all.  If I did game in windows I might have a different conclusion - since AME turns off updates.  So I am stuck at the version of Win10 that was out when I installed AME.  I guess if I gamed I could use AME as the base for my virtualization system and then install later or other versions of Windows in virtual machines with AME as the HOST for specific games.

My AME does do some strange things - I am running it in dual screen mode:  sometimes when it wakes up from sleep it switches the left screen with the right screen, and sometimes a minimized window will restore off the edge of the desktop and it is difficult to get it to move into the desktop where it can be seen.  And removing the administrator ID is kinda strange.

[Andi B.]

So if you want to dual boot to two operating systems, one using UEFI and one using Legacy or CSM, you would have to put those operating systems on separate drives and use the BIOS supplied F11 boot menu.

On my new Asrock B550M Pro4 with Ryzen 7 I choice to UEFI boot from the first MBR NVMe which starts the AN Launcher there. From there I can choose to start an ArcaOS installation on the MBR drive (L:\) but also the ArcaOS installation on my second GPT NVMe (D:\). I also can start GRUB/Debian on the 1. NVMe and Win7 on the second GPT drive.

Bottom line I don't need to go into BIOS to choice between OSes on MBR or GPT disks. In also have EFI partitions on both NVMe drives which I can choice in BIOS. But I think that is was not a good idea and pretty pretty sure not necessary. I can choice in BIOS to boot non UEFI from disk 1 which would start Airboot there. But this is useless as the UEFI AN Launcher makes a better job on mixed MBR/GPT disks with an EFI partition.