ULi’s Latest and Last Chipset for AMD64 Reviewed

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 12/16/2005 | 11:53 PM ]

The competition on the market of chipsets for processors by Advanced Micro Devices was not really fierce recently: NVIDIA has been making the highest-performing core-logic solutions for some time now, whereas ATI Technologies took the market by storm with its quality and inexpensive RADEON XPRESS 200-series. Companies like SiS, VIA Technologies and ULi were presented in only a few computers sold. However, recently VIA unveiled its K8T900 and ULi followed with the M1697. Unfortunately, the latter would hardly become popular, as ULi has been acquired by NVIDIA Corp.

ULi Electronics’ M1697 chip features PCI Express x16 bus for graphics cards that is reprogrammable for dual PCI Express x8 lanes operation for applications that require two slots for graphics cards, such as multi-GPU technologies from ATI Technologies and NVIDIA Corp.

AnandTech web-site has taken a look at a new chipset for AMD64 microprocessors from ULi. Although the reviewed sample of the mainboard is a reference one, the author carried out an in-depth investigation to determine what performance and features can be expected in the future from mainboards built around ULi M1697 chipset.

“The natural question today is: how does the ULi M1697 compare to the excellent performance of the NVIDIA nForce4 and the ATI RD480? Since the real competition is the now mainstream NVIDIA nF4 SLI/Ultra and the ATI Rx480 Grouper/Crossfire, we would have to conclude that the ULi 1697 competes very well indeed. The M1697 gives up nothing in performance to the NVIDIA or ATI chipsets,” concludes AnandTech.

“From a features standpoint, the ULI M1697 compares very well against the current best in the Socket 939 market. It provides both HD Audio and SATA2 - something no other discrete AMD chipset currently provides. The SATA2 and IDE both provide excellent performance, and the USB performance is certainly competitive. Based on the low pricing that we have heard about with this M1697 single-chip solution, the feature set is all the more outstanding. The only failing is that 10/100 Ethernet is the only version supported directly by the chipset. The world has moved to Gigabit Ethernet and ULi will quickly find that this will become an issue unless they address Gigabit LAN support in future chipsets. The limitation of 10/100 direct support for Ethernet also has the unfortunate distinction of labeling the M1697 as a budget chipset. That’s really regrettable, since other performance areas are anything but budget,” adds the author.

• AnandTech: First Look at ULi M1697 for AMD Athlon 64.