SLI Performance
We installed the supplied SLI bridge connector and the ULi PowerExpress Engine Enabling driver with the NVIDIA 81.98 WHQL driver set for SLI testing. Upon installation of the ULi PowerExpress driver and a system reboot, the NVIDIA 81.98 driver properly recognized our additional MSI 7800GTX video card for SLI operation.
The performance of the ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 board in our SLI gaming benchmarks is competitive and, at times, equal to our NVIDIA nForce4 boards. The Doom3 scores are almost equal to that of the nForce4 boards and they do not show the anomaly that we witnessed in the single video card testing. However, the F.E.A.R. scores are lower than what we expected based upon the single card testing. This could be the result of the PowerExpress driver not being fully optimized or a potential issue with power delivery under stress testing.
The performance pattern continues in the synthetic benchmarks with the ASRock board, scoring a victory in the 3DMark06 test although it trailed the top NVIDIA based boards in the other 3DMark tests. We were impressed with the general SLI performance of the ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 and did not find any performance or graphic issues in our test suites. We extensively tested the board in SLI operation with several game titles without issue and believe the ULi PowerExpress Engine Enabling driver is a very stable solution at this time. However, please note the board has not been certified by NVIDIA for SLI operation.
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Zoomer - Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - link
This board would cannabilize sales of the premium SLI32 and xfire board that Asus sells for $150 IF it included voltage settings up to 2v vCore, 3.2v vMem, etc.They would be stupid to do it. These people will pay the $150 anyway if they don't have an easy (cheap) alternative. For the rest of us, we can get busy with a 2B pencil, solders or conductive ink. ;) And forgo the warranty on it, so if it goes boom in a year's time, you're on your own.
Nice strategy. Would AT leak the beta bios for comparison's sake? (We'll smuggle it to xs or ocwb....:D)
poohbear - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
and for the record the dualsata2 is a very stable mobo @ stock settings, i have to give credit where it's due, but for overclocking this company's products shouldnt even be considered.sandorski - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
It kinda sucks Nvidia bought out ULI, they were very innovative and really filled niche markets very well. Then again, perhaps Nvidia will let them continue doing interesting things there?Cygni - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Hard to argue with that... looks like ASRock/ULi has another mega seller on their hand with this baby. But I cant help but wish it had an AGP slot thrown in between the two PCI-Ex lanes, to allow an upgrade path. Thats probably the primary reason the ULi 1695 boards have been selling so well.The IDE and SATA performance numbers are really striking in contrast to Nvidia's. I hope we see the inclusion of ULi's storage controller in future Nvidia chipsets.
All for $85... awesome.
Furen - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
If it had an AGP slot then it would have to use ULi's AGP tunnel + the 1697 instead of the 1695 + 1697, which would mean that it'd only have 16 PCI-e lanes for graphics. I suppose most of us wouldn't mind going for two 8x slots while in SLI but then most of us wouldn't really want SLI to begin with.JackPack - Thursday, March 2, 2006 - link
Quality doesn't seem to be bad either. Panasonic and UCC caps in there.