EPoX EP-9U1697-GLi: ULi M1697 Goes Mainstream

Final Words

The EPoX EP-9U1697 GLi offers excellent performance at a bargain price. The performance of the board in the majority of the benchmarks was extremely competitive with the ATI and NVIDIA chipset offerings. The stability of the board was superb at stock settings and very good at overclocked settings. We find it refreshing that a board with this performance is being offered for a retail price around US $85. While the ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2 offers a greater feature set for the same price, the EPoX board offers significantly better performance in the overclocking area.

With that said, let's move on to our performance opinions regarding this board.

In the video area, the inclusion of dual PCI Express x16 connectors provides dual card capability with eight PCI Express lanes per graphics connector available during dual card operation. The board utilizes a manual jumper system to switch from single x16 PCI-E operation to dual x8 PCI-E operation. While not as convenient as a digital switch, it does assist in keeping the cost of the board down. The performance of the board under SLI testing matched that of our nForce4 boards and offered full SLI compatibility with the ULi PowerExpress Engine Enabling driver although the board is not SLI certified. We tried this driver with the 81.85, 81.95, 81.98, and 82.12 drivers without any issue in a myriad of benchmarks and games. EPoX will not be supporting or certifying SLI operations on the board. The board also fully supported our ATI X1900XTX and EVGA 7900GTX video cards in limited testing.

In the on-board audio area, the EPoX board offers the Realtek ALC-655 AC97 audio codec. While the ULi M1697 chipset fully supports 7.1 HD audio, EPoX only provided 5.1 AC97 capability, probably due to the implementation cost of the Realtek HD audio codecs. The audio output of this codec in the music, video, and DVD areas is decent for an on-board solution. The audio quality in gaming was okay, but it did not match the output of the Sound Blaster X-FI or even the Realtek ALC-882. If you plan on utilizing this board for gaming, then our recommendation is to purchase an appropriate sound card for consistency in frame rates across a wide range of games and audio quality. However, the Realtek ALC-655 should suffice for the majority of home/office users.

In the storage area, the EPoX board offers the full complement of storage options afforded by the ULi M1697 chipset. The board offers RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 capability, NCQ, Hot Plug, and 3Gb/s support along with dual channel ATA133 Ultra DMA capability. The board also offers eight ULi USB 2.0 ports when utilizing the two USB 2.0 headers. The performances of the ULi SATA and IDE controllers were excellent and easily exceeded the nForce4 solutions.

In the performance area, the EPoX EP-9U1697 GLi generated outstanding benchmark scores in the majority of applications, considering the price of the board. The board's performance was consistently competitive with other ATI, ULi, and NVIDIA chipset offerings in the majority of benchmarks and applications. The stability of the board was excellent during testing and general usage.

The EPoX EP-9U1697 GLi is a board designed and marketed for the AMD enthusiast on a budget, yet it excels at equaling the performance of boards costing up to two times more. EPoX is the first manufacturer to market with the ULi M1697 single chipset configuration offering and we are impressed with their efforts.


However, we feel that EPoX made the following errors in the design and execution of the board. The location of the floppy drive connector at the bottom of the board, the location of the 24-pin ATX power connector right above the CPU socket, and the use of active cooling on the ULi M1697 chipset could be improved.

Although we understand the budget nature of the board, we believe that the lack of PCI-E or PCI based Gigabit Ethernet LAN controller is an issue for a board being targeted to an enthusiast market. Also, the lack of an HD audio codec hampers the audio capability of the board and while we understand most serious gamers will opt for a discreet audio solution, we still feel that this option should have been included, considering the native support provided by the ULi M1697. EPoX will be offering the 9U1697 GLi-J board with PCI-E Gigabit via the Marvell 88E8053 controller, but it will only be upgrading the audio to the 8-channel capable ALC-850 AC97 codec. EPoX has not disclosed pricing or availability of this model at the time of our writing.

The BIOS issue that we encountered, which caused random lockups after exiting Windows XP, was disconcerting, although we did not notice any stability or performance issues within Windows or during testing. EPoX has provided us with an updated BIOS for testing. However, it also has issues. At the time of this writing, we are still waiting for an acceptable solution from EPoX.

We feel that it is unfortunate that the ULi M1697 chipset utilized on this board will probably have a short life span in light of the NVIDIA acquisition, but we are glad to see that EPoX has done a wonderful job in bringing this board to market at a low price-point while offering superb performance and stability. If you're willing to live with the few minor shortcomings mentioned above, this is a great board given the budget price.