ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP for Athlon 64 – Part 2 with SLI
by Wesley Fink on August 5, 2005 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
SLI and Dual Video
Benchmarking and performance comparisons were covered in FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64. Please refer to the Part 1 of this review for test comparisons to other Athlon 64 Socket 939 chipsets.The other big news with ULi Reference 2 is the ULi support for NVIDIA SLI with their chipset and the option for dual PCIe video. Does it work?
There is no doubt that dual PCIe video works as intended with the riser card. Mount two PCIe cards, install the driver, and dual video (or triple with the AGP, or quad with AGP and PCI) is certainly possible.
ULi supplied some custom drivers for SLI testing, since at this early stage they have not received SLI certification for their Reference boards. The special ULi drivers are based on NVIDIA driver build 71.24, so they are quite a bit older than the current 77.72.
We then installed two NVIDIA 6800 Ultra video cards. To our surprise, the two double-width cards would install in the riser card. The riser looked tight, but the 6800 Ultra fit just fine.
It is clear from the enabling of SLI with the pre-production driver that SLI will work on the ULi M1695/M1567. ULi just has a bit more work to do on the special driver for ULi SLI.
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Kinesis - Thursday, August 18, 2005 - link
Someone may have asked this, but I didn't see it, my apologies if this is a duplicate. But will these boards support AMD's dual core chips?ElJefe - Saturday, August 20, 2005 - link
Not only will it support it... it is the only one out that DOES support it truly. It needs no bios revision, it is built into the original bios to support it. asus, gigabyte and abit all warned me that it is highly likely that if you purchase any of their boards and put a dual core cold on them as a new system, the computer wont "post" and just sit there. youll need to buy a 939 chip or borrow someones if it isnt this m1695 asrock board. really, there hasnt been much growth since this has been reviewed in boards, so none have put the dual core bios as their official starter/tested/stable bios yet.and from reading 100's of legitimate forum entries from all 3 of those main companies, i can say that I would never do dual core without going for a board that is brand new. the problems and conflicts are rather universal and rather pathetic.
I am not sure why there isnt talk of this much in forums around here, but if you read the forums of those places you will see obvious problems (abit is the worst at the moment though, which is most unfortunate as they were my favorite company for many years)
bozilla - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
I'm not sure if someone asked this...but is it possible to use existing AGP card and PCI-e card on the same board with Crossfire for example with this chipset? Let's look at this like this. I have an AGP X800XT PE now and I want to buy a X850XT PE Crossfire edition in PCI-E and put both in the motherboard that comes out with this chipset. Possible?Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
nVidia has sent us the following information:"The ULI board isn't certified for SLI. It hasn't been submitted."
nVidia added that modified nVidia drivers generally indicate a board that is not certified.
nserra - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link
Well it isn't selling any way, why certify it?ElJefe - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link
just a tip:someone said that Asrock usa isnt going to sell this mobo in the US of A, that is not true, i called today and it definitely is going to be sold here very soon.
mino - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
Actually this is understandable. Why bother to certify an preview board ? For a company like Uli this would be a waste of time and money.deathwalker - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
I'm looking forward to the release of Mobo's on this chipset. I want to upgrade to a socket 939 system and at the same time be able to keep costly components that I have(6800gt agp card for one)for use in it. I hope we se a micro ATX version that I can drop in a Aspire X-Qpack case. Good job Anandtech for picking up on this upcoming release and covering it for your dedicated subscribers. I don't think Tom's Hardware even knows this exists..not a whisper on there site about this chipset.Zebo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link
Not really because I already bought a AN8 Utlra.. A, as in Abit. That's really what ULi needs for wide-spread adoption.. ABIT/DFI/ASUS/Gigabyte/MSI branded boards with wild OC options.. not Asrock/tul/ECS. I waited and waited for a decent SiS755 board which was also very promising.. which never came. I'm betting the same will happen here, especially so now that board makers have to make room in their stable for ATI based chipsets.nserra - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link
But Uli offers AGP 8X, no one does this, so they will be “forced” to support it.