ULI M1697 Chipset & Specs
The EPoX EP-9U1697 GLI is capable of SLI and at a cheaper price point. The board overclocks extremely well, but is it too much of a good thing? Yes, we managed to get SLI working with v81.98 drivers… read on!
When the ULi M1697 chipset was launched a few months back, it had all the traits of becoming a great budget solution with nearly all the features of the AMD nForce 4 chipset and a cheaper price too! With an ULi engineered patch that enabled SLI and reports of being a great overclocker, the ULi M1697 was quickly becoming a poor (or smart) person’s solution for a cheap yet fast gaming and overclocking computer.
Besides being our first hands-on look at ULi’s M1697 chipset here on PC Perspective, today we’re also examining the package prepared by the folks at EPoX – the EP-9U1697 GLI motherboard. With NVIDIA just completing aquisition of ULi, the M1697 may be the last of its kind we’ll see on the market for a while.
The ULi M1697 Chipset
The ULi M1697 is unique in the AMD chipset arena as it is the only chipset to natively support SATA-II and HD Audio. There are some compromises however notably in the 10/100 network controller.
The following is a summary of current Socket 939 PCI-Express chipsets currently available. These specifications are by no means concrete as different manufacturers may choose to implement a given chipset different to suit their product line (i.e. use AC’97 instead of Azalia).
| ULi M1697 | NVIDIA nForce 4 X16 | NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI | VIA K8T900 | ATI XPress 3200 | ATI XPress 200 CrossFire | ||||
| PCI Express | |||||||||
| # PCI-E Lanes | 20 | 40 | 20 | 22 | 40 | 22 | |||
| #16X | 1 ** | 2 | 1 ** | 1 ** | 2 | 1 | |||
|
# 1X |
3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||
| # 2X | 1 | ||||||||
| Dual Graphics Suppoer | Unofficial SLI | SLI | SLI | – | CrossFire | CrossFire | |||
| SATA-II | |||||||||
| # Controllers / Lanes | 1 | * | * | * | * | * | |||
| # Connections | 4 | * | * | * | * | * | |||
| RAID | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | * | * | * | * | * | |||
| SATA | |||||||||
| # Controllers / Lanes | – | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | |||
| # Connections | – | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||
| RAID | – | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0,1 | 0,1 | |||
| ATA-133 | |||||||||
| # Controllers / Lanes | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| # Connections | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| RAID | No | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | 0, 1, 0+1, 5 | No | 0, 1 | ||||
| Audio | |||||||||
| Azalia | AC ’97 v2.3 | AC ’97 v2.3 | Envy 24 | Azalia | AC ’97 v2.3 | ||||
| PCI | |||||||||
| ? | 6 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 5 | ||||
| USB 2.0 | |||||||||
| 8 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||||
* Manufacturers may choose to add this functionality seperately.
** 16X slot configurable to two 8X slots for dual graphics cards.
EPoX EP-9U1697 GLI Specifications
The specifications for the EP-9U1697 GLI follows pretty closely to the reference specification of the M1697 chipset. To keep the product in an affordable price bracket, the onboard audio uses a standard AC’97 codec (ALC655) instead of HD Audio.
The specification mentions dual 16x PCI-E slots which isn’t accurate as the EP-9U1697 has a single 16x slot that can be changed to two 8x slots for dual graphcis cards.
|
Socket Type: |
Socket 939 |
|
Chipset: |
ULi M1697 |
|
Processor: |
AMD Athlon-64 and Athlon-64 FX |
|
Max FSB: |
2.0 GTs HT FSB |
|
Memory: |
4 x DDR SDRAM PC2700/PC3200 Dual Channel, 4GB max. |
|
AGP/VGA Slot: |
Single 16x / dual 8x for GLI support* |
|
PCI Slot: |
3x PCI, 1x PCI-E x1 |
|
IDE: |
2 x E/IDE Ultra DMA/133, 4 drives max. |
|
SATA: |
4 (SATA II, RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5) |
|
USB: |
8 (4 Rear, 4 Pin Header) USB 2.0 |
|
Network: |
Integrated 10/100 LAN |
|
Audio: |
Realtek ALC65X selectable 2 or 6-CH audio with SPDIF header |
|
SPDIF: |
Yes |
|
BIOS: |
Award/Phoenix BIOS v6.0 |
|
Power BIOS: |
Yes |
|
LED Debug: |
P80P LED Debug Display |
|
Size: |
ATX (305mm x 245mm) |
|
Accessories: |
IDE/Floppy Cables, SATA Data/Power Cables, I/O Shield, CD Driver, Manual |
(*corrected from “Dual PCI-E x16 for GLi Support”)
Source: EPoX’s website
