ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP for Athlon 64 – Part 2 with SLI

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.

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The most important is the addition of holes for card holder brackets to mount the riser card.

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With the riser card installed, you can see how to mount two PCIe video cards sideways in the two x8 slots. It may look tight in the picture, but we had no problem at all mounting two NVIDIA 6800 Ultra video cards that were double-slot width.

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.