FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on July 13, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
ULi M1695 Chipset
The ULi M1695 chipset supports Socket 754, 939, and 940. 1000 HT (5X) and higher are fully supported.
The M1695 provides a PCI Express Interface that can drive either 1 x16 slot of 2 x8 slots. The 2 x8 configuration is called SLI on NVIDIA motherboards, and the option of x16 or 2 x8 is even available in this Reference Board BIOS.
ULi has even been showing an x16 riser card that can be used to support 2 bridged x8 PCIe video cards from a single x16 PCIe slot. Apparently, this is just one of several options to provide "SLI-like" performance with two PCIe cards.
From this basic PCI Express Tunnel chip, ULi talks about flexibility.
Combined with a M1567 South Bridge, as is this Reference Board, you can achieve AGP 8X and PCIe x16/2 x8 combined with support for PCI graphics.
Combining M1695 with an unnamed ULi South Bridge can provide dual x16 slots and additional x1/x2/x4 slots.
Obviously, ULi designed M1695 and the accompanying South Bridges for the utmost in flexibility. With support for 754/939/940 and all the various combinations that can be used to provide custom graphics capabilities, you will likely see many different ULi configurations in the marketplace.
The flexibility even extends beyond the ULi brand, as the South Bridges can be combined with other North Bridges such as the ATI Crossfire. Similarly, the M1695 can be combined with other chips such as the AMD-8132 PCI-X Tunnel for customized Workstation/Server Applications.
More capabilities can be added with more ULi South Bridges on top of the M1695/AMD-8132.
ULi talks about the flexibility of their M1695 chipset, and we certainly agree. It is refreshing to see so many available choices that give manufacturers the options of building everything from the most basic Socket 754 boards to full-featured 939/940 workstation/server boards with dual x16 PCIe slots and more.
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Sabresiberian - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Dang! I just bought an AGP mainboard! LOL! Well, I probably saved $100 and money was a concern for me.Glad to see this come out still, hats off to ULI :)
Wish it had come out 6 months or more ago, I think that would have been more timely, but better late than never, heh.
nserra - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#Wesley FinkRepeating....
I noted that the speed of the AGP is very good, but vs the older 1689 is it equal, higher or is the 1689 even higher. Can you do some 939A8X-M test just to check?
Also your explanation to #20 is confusing (at least to me), isn’t HT (200x5) = 1000HT speed and the chipset can do 400 (2,3,4X400) ?
#28 I think Uli chipsets as been always one of the faster with hard disk transfers (a lot faster), the older don’t this I don’t know, also I don’t know the CPU % hit.
QV - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
This looks like an interesting board. When I found out that K8T890 doesn't support dual-core, I figured my next machine would be nF4, but this looks good enough that by the time I build my next machine (which will probably be months away, for money reasons), I may very well use a board based on this chipset.Also, speaking of dual AGP/PCI-E solutions, can't the VIA PT880 Pro do the same? I know it's for a different platform, but it doesn't seem to be a hack like some boards seem to use, and ASRock makes one or two boards based on it. What's the story there? Can the PT880 Pro really also do the triple graphics interface, and platform differences aside, how does it stack up against the M1695?
L3p3rM355i4h - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Interesting. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of the KT890.MarkHark - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Does anybody know if this ULI south bridge supports NCQ and how its hard drive I/O performance compares to Nforce4 and SIS?smn198 - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#25 If I was after AGP with the possibility to upgrade to PCIe without changing motherboard then yes I would be interested but I doubt that this feature will interest OEMs. The cost of a full motherboard will be pushed up once features such as SATA2 and Gbit LAN are added. The possibility of two full x16 PCIe slots is the most interesting thing to me as it could add a bit of future proofing.I would be interested if it had been out a few months and I wasn't going to be an early adopter. I'd want to know what the drivers are like and no matter how good this chipset is, I doubt it's driver support will be as good as the nVidia. Good luck to them though! We need another high-end chipset maker for AMD.
Zebo - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Abit and Gigabyte both have full-blown boards in the works.----------------
Well that certainly makes things interesting.. Thanks again.. And I take back my comment about DOA like SIS 75x seems to be:)
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#25 - Competitive and much cheaper also works - with the unique AGP on PCIe to get your attention.smn198 - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#15 - I agree but also, they don't need to show that they are as competitive as the nForce4, they need to be better.fishy - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Exciting news to me:
_I still have an 'ol Asus/ Ali motherboard
running, and it has been "very good to me" :)
_I'm still looking for a AMD 64 motherboard
(bought an NF4 board a few months ago
and got rid of it really fast, too many
problems)
Asus, get on this fast, please!