FIRST LOOK: ULi M1697 for Athlon 64/x2
by Wesley Fink on December 13, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Basic Features: ULi M1697 Single Chip
The ULi Award BIOS provides a typical range of BIOS control options for a Reference Board used to qualify a chipset. The wide 200 to 400 range for CPU clock was a pleasant surprise, but it is somewhat academic with no memory voltage controls present in the BIOS. The memory tweaking adjustments were extensive, but of limited use without some means of controlling memory voltage. Reference Boards demonstrate chipset features and capabilities to manufacturers, and ULi clearly shows that the M1697 is capable of supporting whatever range of BIOS control or Voltage control features that the manufacturer might wish to implement.
The M1697 is not a board that will be mistaken for a production motherboard. You can see CNR and other risers in odd locations, 4 USB 2.0 ports on the bottom, and a range of PCIe slots that can be turned on or off to test various configurations. Reference Boards are distributed by chipset makers for qualification and not for production. It would therefore be a mistake to dwell on the Reference Board layout, except to say that Reference Boards often influence layout of production boards. IDE, SATA, video slots and bottom edge headers all work fine where they are located. However, we hope that production boards will take a different approach to the location of the 24-pin ATX power connector. Located in about the center of the board between the CPU and rear IO ports, there is really no good way to route the heavy cable. In the center of the board, you have to be careful not to interfere with air flow or operation of the CPU and memory.
The location of the floppy connector at the bottom of the board will be a long reach for floppy users. Many buyers don’t care about floppies any more, but if you still use them, the bottom of the board is an inconvenient and hard to reach location.
ULi M1697 | |
CPU Interface | Socket 939 Athlon 64 |
Chipset | ULi M1697 Single-Chip |
Bus Speeds | 200 to 400MHz in 1MHz Increments |
PCIe Speeds | 100-125MHz in 1MHz Increments |
PCI/AGP | Fixed at 33/66 |
AMD K8 Cool'n'Quiet | Auto, Disable |
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, Auto |
DRAM Voltage | Provision for 2.62V, 2.72V (Not implemented) |
HyperTransport Voltage | 1.20, 1.25, 1.30, 1.35, 1.40V by DIP Switch |
Chipset Voltage | 1.80 to 2.2V in .05V increments by DIP Switch |
PCIe Voltage | 1.80 to 2.0V in .05V increments by DIP Switch |
M1697 Resume Power | 1.70, 1.80, 1.85, 1.90, 2.02V by DIP Switch |
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) 1 x1 PCIe 1 x2 PCIe 1 x4 PCIe 3 PCI Slots 1 CNR Slot 1 LPC slot |
Onboard SATA/RAID | 4 SATA2 3Gb/s Drives by ULi M1597 (RAID 0,1,0+1,5,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 M1597 No Firewire (Optional) |
Onboard LAN | 10/100 Ethernet by Realtek PNY |
Onboard Audio | HD Azalia 7.1 by Realtek ALC883 |
BIOS Revision | Award OCAP1130 Evaluation ROM |
The ULi Award BIOS provides a typical range of BIOS control options for a Reference Board used to qualify a chipset. The wide 200 to 400 range for CPU clock was a pleasant surprise, but it is somewhat academic with no memory voltage controls present in the BIOS. The memory tweaking adjustments were extensive, but of limited use without some means of controlling memory voltage. Reference Boards demonstrate chipset features and capabilities to manufacturers, and ULi clearly shows that the M1697 is capable of supporting whatever range of BIOS control or Voltage control features that the manufacturer might wish to implement.
The M1697 is not a board that will be mistaken for a production motherboard. You can see CNR and other risers in odd locations, 4 USB 2.0 ports on the bottom, and a range of PCIe slots that can be turned on or off to test various configurations. Reference Boards are distributed by chipset makers for qualification and not for production. It would therefore be a mistake to dwell on the Reference Board layout, except to say that Reference Boards often influence layout of production boards. IDE, SATA, video slots and bottom edge headers all work fine where they are located. However, we hope that production boards will take a different approach to the location of the 24-pin ATX power connector. Located in about the center of the board between the CPU and rear IO ports, there is really no good way to route the heavy cable. In the center of the board, you have to be careful not to interfere with air flow or operation of the CPU and memory.
The location of the floppy connector at the bottom of the board will be a long reach for floppy users. Many buyers don’t care about floppies any more, but if you still use them, the bottom of the board is an inconvenient and hard to reach location.
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semiconductorslave - Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - link
I was replying to the first comment on the post, "Why do all the new motherboards have all these PCIe slots when there is nothing available to stick in them."I made the assumption that since this person said there was nothing availible, that he or she did not make any effort to search. My example of Newegg and Google was narrow on purpose, showing how easy it is to find out what is availible when one starts looking. I was only trying to make a point that people instead of asking right away, could spend a little effort and maybe say something like, "I found these cards, are there any more?"
But saying, "YOU don't have the ability to see how the information's presentation is relevant." is quite an assumption on your part about my abilities.
mindless1 - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
Not an assumption at all, it comes straight from what you wrote, and yes it was in the context of what you'd replied to.semiconductorslave - Thursday, December 15, 2005 - link
You say, "you need to learn to think for someone other than yourself" but I didn't see you list any cards, where I at least did search and made a comment about how one should at least attempt to look for themselves before making comments like there aren't any PCI ex cards. Are you daft? You must just be trying to get my goat. I was trying to make a point but if you want to go on the attack, that isn't a productive debate anymore. I would suggest you don't take your own advice and try to think for anyone else since I don't think you can spare the mental energy.You can now have the final word as this is going nowhere.
Ozz1113 - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
SCSI, raid drive controllers...Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
Gigabit Ethernet PCIe x1 controllers.Missing Ghost - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
tv tunersceefka - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
PCI-e Firewire 400 and 800 cards by SIIG and BelkinCalin - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
The new Creative xFi cards are PCIe 1xLoneWolf15 - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
Sad to say, they are not, they're plain-jane PCI. People had hoped they would be, but Creative is unlikely to do PCIe until its next-gen card after the X-Fi. Even with the X-Fi and todays most advanced games that can use its features, there isn't enough data being transferred to saturate the PCI bus.
mindless1 - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
... isn't enough data to saturate from this one lone card, but seldom does a board only have one PCI slot. It's not the audio card that's the issue, it's when the audio card interferes with OTHER cards.