ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP for Athlon 64 – Part 2 with SLI
by Wesley Fink on August 5, 2005 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Several weeks ago, we took a closer look at ULi's newest AMD chipset in FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64. We were impressed with what we found - a chipset with competitive performance that fully supported PCI Express and AGP 8X.
The combination of the ULi M1695 HyperTransport PCI Express Tunnel Chip for AMD Athlon 64 platforms with the M1567 South Bridge turned out to be uniquely suited to current AGP owners. Some other chipsets and boards have found ways to combine PCIe and AGP on a PCIe board, but there were always performance compromises with AGP performance, which was normally derived from the slower PCI bus. The ULi M1695/M1567, on the other hand, provided AGP performance without compromise, as well as competitive PCIe graphics support.
ULi promised even more, as they told us a second M1695/M1567 Reference Board would soon be available that supported all the modes of the first board plus Dual PCIe graphics and the possibility of SLI mode on release boards. With all the pluses of the original ULi Reference Board, the follow-up with dual 8X PCIe slots plus AGP was an exciting prospect! As soon as we got our hands on ULi Reference Board 2, we quickly ran it through its paces to bring you our test results.
As promised in Part 1, performance of the ULi chipset features was also evaluated. ULi is also the south bridge choice for some ATI Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard makers. This makes it important to compare the performance of on-chip features like USB.
The combination of the ULi M1695 HyperTransport PCI Express Tunnel Chip for AMD Athlon 64 platforms with the M1567 South Bridge turned out to be uniquely suited to current AGP owners. Some other chipsets and boards have found ways to combine PCIe and AGP on a PCIe board, but there were always performance compromises with AGP performance, which was normally derived from the slower PCI bus. The ULi M1695/M1567, on the other hand, provided AGP performance without compromise, as well as competitive PCIe graphics support.
ULi promised even more, as they told us a second M1695/M1567 Reference Board would soon be available that supported all the modes of the first board plus Dual PCIe graphics and the possibility of SLI mode on release boards. With all the pluses of the original ULi Reference Board, the follow-up with dual 8X PCIe slots plus AGP was an exciting prospect! As soon as we got our hands on ULi Reference Board 2, we quickly ran it through its paces to bring you our test results.
As promised in Part 1, performance of the ULi chipset features was also evaluated. ULi is also the south bridge choice for some ATI Radeon Xpress 200 motherboard makers. This makes it important to compare the performance of on-chip features like USB.
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Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
The 400 graph has been removed. After considering the questions here it is fair to say the ULi tests were not run under the same test conditions (due to no DDR Voltage controls and limited vCore adjustments) and should not be directly compared. The 242 remains since it was achieved with the same test conditions.Wesley Fink - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
Yes, this is the only board using the FX57 in OC testing, but we will be testing with the FX57 in the future. Yes, that makes it an unfair comparison.It really was not possible to use our normal OC tests because the Reference board has no memory voltage adjustments at all. We stated this very clearly in the reviews. The option was to report very low results, or to make changes to the test to show how high the board could actually go in overclock (400 clock speed). We chose to show what the board could do on OC, but the results are not directly comparable to past results.
Lonyo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
OCZ BOOSTER FFS!!!!Aquila76 - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
So if you want to run SLI, you have to use that riser card, right? How exactly does that fit in a standard ATX case? The cards are 90 degrees from their normal position. I understand that this is a good board if you're going to use older AGP cards and want an upgrade path; but I would think they could make it a lot cheaper if they left SLI capability off as it seems rather pointless in this format.kmmatney - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
I thought the same thing, but yes, its just a prrof of concept - the retail board makers will implement it without the need for a riser card.MarkB - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
I think it's more of a proof of concept for showing off the chipset's capabilities, instead of making a whole new reference board to house the 2 x8 pci-e slots.I doubt any retail board would use the riser approach.
Sunbird - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
Here is South Africa the ASRock 939A8X-m based in this ULi chipset has arrived at our local reseller last week.Its a mATX board and has SATA raid and all the other usual stuff. Near the bottom price range of the local market (aka cheap).
grug2k - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
The AsRock 939AX-M is NOT a ULi M1695 board. It's an old AGP-only board based on the ULi M1689 chipset.lsman - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
Computex2005 show also has Jetway A695DAG, Chaintech S1695-2WT - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
This board should be on the short list (hehe, so short there is only one name on it) of boards for the DIY builder looking to keep their current AGP card and move to PCI Express down the road. There are a lot of users that fit that description so this board makes sense in every way. The only downside will be whether the boards are actually produced by some quality vendors who are not stuck on the Nvidia bandwagon.My S754 setup is adequate for any game that I play, so I should be able to make another year on it. After that, S939 and a 3800+ x2 makes more sense, but after buying that, I won't have the $ left to splurge on a mid-high end PCI Express video card. My 6800 cost $295 when I bought it, so moving that to the S939 setup makes financial sense.