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
Basic Features: ULi M1695/M1567 Reference 2
The ULi Reference Board 2 sports exactly the same features as Reference Board 1 with a couple of significant additions. Reference 2 supports a riser card to actually mount video cards in the two x8 PCIe video configurations that is a BIOS option on both boards. Furthermore, the two additional PCIe slots are x4 capable - supporting the option of x4 or x2 PCIe configuration available in the BIOS.| ULi M1695/M1567 Reference 2 | |
| CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
| Chipset | ULi M1695 Northbridge - ULi M1567 Southbridge |
| BUS Speeds | 200MHz to 400MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| PCIe Speeds | 75-125MHz in 1MHz Increments |
| PCI/AGP | Fixed at 33/66 |
| Core Voltage | Startup, 0.825V to 1.55V in 0.025V increments |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Startup, 4x-25x in 1X increments |
| HyperTransport Frequency | 1000MHz (1GHz) |
| HyperTransport Multiplier | 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000 |
| DRAM Voltage | NO Adjustments |
| HyperTransport Voltage | NO Adjustments |
| Memory Slots | Four 184-pin DDR DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered Memory to 4GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 PCIe x16 (or 2 PCIe x8 with riser card) 1 AGP 8X 2 PCIe x4 (or x2) 2 PCI Slots |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 2 SATA Drives by ULi M1567 (RAID 0, 1, JBOD) |
| Onboard IDE/IDE RAID | Two Standard ATA133/100/66 (4 drives) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/IEEE-1394 | 8 USB 2.0 ports supported by ULi M1567 No Firewire (Optional) |
| Onboard LAN | 10/100 Ethernet by Realtek PNY |
| Onboard Audio | AC '97 2.3 6-Channel by Realtek ALC655 |
| BIOS Revision | Award OC50624A (7/12/2005) |
Despite the fact both Reference boards have essentially the same BIOS and features, Reference 2 has many physical changes.
Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
The riser card and sideways slots allowed testing dual video and SLI on the Reference 2 board, but it is hardly a configuration that we would recommend for a production board. Our hats are off to ULi for a clever way to turn a single slot into two x8 and SLI, but this would be a very insecure mount and a space-waster on most boards. To ULi's credit, the two x4/x2 PCIe slots are still usable with the riser, but the AGP and all PCI slots are completely covered with the side-ways card mount.
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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.