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

SLI Performance

We installed our SLI bridge connector and the ULi PowerExpress Engine Enabling driver with the NVIDIA 81.98 WHQL driver set for the 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. EPoX has stated they will not be including an SLI bridge connector or the ULi PowerExpress driver in their retail package. Also, the board will not be certified for SLI operations.

The performance of the Epox board in our SLI gaming benchmarks is very competitive and, at times, better than our NVIDIA nForce4 boards. In fact, we are very surprised at the level of performance in these benchmarks compared to the NVIDIA nForce4 solutions and we understand why NVIDIA chose to pursue ULi.

The performance pattern continues in the synthetic benchmarks with the Epox board scoring a sweep in the 3DMark tests. Overall, we were very impressed with the SLI performance of the EPoX EP-9U1697 GLi and did not find any performance or graphic issues in our test suites. We also played numerous games without issue and believe that the ULi PowerExpress Engine Enabling driver is a very stable solution.