FIRST LOOK: ULi M1697 for Athlon 64/x2
by Wesley Fink on December 13, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Our Take
When we tested the ULi M1695/M1567 chipset a few months ago, NVIDIA nForce4 was the only real competition. Today, both the NVIDIA nForce4 family and the developing ATI Rx480/580 family are competitors in the AMD Athlon 64/x2 market. 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.
There should be concerns, however, if your AMD plans include SLI or Crossfire. ULi has all of the right features in their M1697 for SLI and Crossfire to work - that is not the concern. It is just that ULi is not a GPU maker, and they, therefore, are not in a strong position to ever expect support from NVIDIA or ATI for SLI or Crossfire on the ULi chipset. We're sure that both NVIDIA and ATI would be happy to license ULi, but it is doubtful that a value chipset like this ULi could afford the licensing fees and still be attractive to manufacturers trying to build a better mousetrap. The best hope in this arena is if the market were to move to an Open standard where all dual-video solutions work on all dual PCIe slot motherboards. We don't know when or if this will happen, but it is certainly the kind of development that would make SLI/Crossfire a mainstream solution.
This is closer to a reality in the Intel chipset market where Intel and ATI both support Crossfire and NVIDIA goes it alone. But the ULi is an AMD solution, and in that arena, the dual x8 will be useful for running two video cards, but not for running SLI or Crossfire. ULi does have a relationship with ATI so perhaps a technology exchange is a possibility for Crossfire. The best hope, however, is that SLI/Crossfire will become an open cross-platform standard. We can certainly dream.
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.
Until the SLI/Crossfire question is resolved, the real market for M1697 will be the nF4 Ultra and ATI Rx480 Grouper. At the expected very low price, the M1697 should compete very well in this market - providing the HD Azalia audio that is missing from nForce4, and the SATA2/competitive USB missing from ATI with the ATI SB450 south bridge.
Undoubtedly, there will also be ULi M1697 boards with dual x16 PCIe slots. They may be useful for running two video cards feeding different monitors or running specialized x8/x4 cards. However, the lack of real SLI/Crossfire support will limit how competitive ULi can be in this market. If ULi licenses SLI or Crossfire, we could be really positive about their prospects in the mainstream SLI/Crossfire market. Or, if by some miracle, the dual video card market opens up with broad driver support, the ULi M1697 will be much more attractive.
ULi continues to build some of the most interesting chipsets that we have tested in the AMD market. Unfortunately for ULI, not many manufacturers have been willing to produce new boards with the new ULi chipsets. We understand that the M1697 will see the light of day from some Tier One manufacturers. Abit also tells us that they will be producing a ULi M1697 that fully exploits the chipset capabilities. We are anxious to see where manufacturers will position the ULi chipset. If the production boards also perform well as Enthusiast-oriented boards, the ULi M1697 could certainly become a strong player in the bang-for the-buck market. If SLI/Crossfire support appears, the ULi M1697 chipset could be even more.
When we tested the ULi M1695/M1567 chipset a few months ago, NVIDIA nForce4 was the only real competition. Today, both the NVIDIA nForce4 family and the developing ATI Rx480/580 family are competitors in the AMD Athlon 64/x2 market. 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.
There should be concerns, however, if your AMD plans include SLI or Crossfire. ULi has all of the right features in their M1697 for SLI and Crossfire to work - that is not the concern. It is just that ULi is not a GPU maker, and they, therefore, are not in a strong position to ever expect support from NVIDIA or ATI for SLI or Crossfire on the ULi chipset. We're sure that both NVIDIA and ATI would be happy to license ULi, but it is doubtful that a value chipset like this ULi could afford the licensing fees and still be attractive to manufacturers trying to build a better mousetrap. The best hope in this arena is if the market were to move to an Open standard where all dual-video solutions work on all dual PCIe slot motherboards. We don't know when or if this will happen, but it is certainly the kind of development that would make SLI/Crossfire a mainstream solution.
This is closer to a reality in the Intel chipset market where Intel and ATI both support Crossfire and NVIDIA goes it alone. But the ULi is an AMD solution, and in that arena, the dual x8 will be useful for running two video cards, but not for running SLI or Crossfire. ULi does have a relationship with ATI so perhaps a technology exchange is a possibility for Crossfire. The best hope, however, is that SLI/Crossfire will become an open cross-platform standard. We can certainly dream.
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.
Until the SLI/Crossfire question is resolved, the real market for M1697 will be the nF4 Ultra and ATI Rx480 Grouper. At the expected very low price, the M1697 should compete very well in this market - providing the HD Azalia audio that is missing from nForce4, and the SATA2/competitive USB missing from ATI with the ATI SB450 south bridge.
Undoubtedly, there will also be ULi M1697 boards with dual x16 PCIe slots. They may be useful for running two video cards feeding different monitors or running specialized x8/x4 cards. However, the lack of real SLI/Crossfire support will limit how competitive ULi can be in this market. If ULi licenses SLI or Crossfire, we could be really positive about their prospects in the mainstream SLI/Crossfire market. Or, if by some miracle, the dual video card market opens up with broad driver support, the ULi M1697 will be much more attractive.
ULi continues to build some of the most interesting chipsets that we have tested in the AMD market. Unfortunately for ULI, not many manufacturers have been willing to produce new boards with the new ULi chipsets. We understand that the M1697 will see the light of day from some Tier One manufacturers. Abit also tells us that they will be producing a ULi M1697 that fully exploits the chipset capabilities. We are anxious to see where manufacturers will position the ULi chipset. If the production boards also perform well as Enthusiast-oriented boards, the ULi M1697 could certainly become a strong player in the bang-for the-buck market. If SLI/Crossfire support appears, the ULi M1697 chipset could be even more.
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ATWindsor - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
No Gbit LAN :( That alone makes this chipset much much worse, I won't by a Mobo in this day and age with only 100 mbit (Having a central file-server in your home-network is great, saves you nooise and money)Peter - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
No Gbit LAN inside the chipset? So?Discrete PCI Express Gbit LAN chips are widely available, and they're no larger and no more expensive than the PHY chips you need for chipset integrated Gbit LAN.
All you lose is a single PCIE lane, nothing else - not money, not performance, not board space.
bldckstark - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
My home network can't even spell gigabit. I won't have Gbit in my house for quite some time yet, so this is not an issue for me. I don't know a single person who has a full Gbit home network, or anyone who is even looking to change over. AT played this off pretty hard on ULi, but if this is the reason that the board costs so much less, then I say good for them. Dropping a new chipset from a new company into the high content/high price market is not a very good way to grow. Low price, high content, high performance is how you get to be a household name. From a marketing perspective I think this makes good sense. How many of you would buy from a new chipset maker not knowing about driver support, bios updates, or quality at the same price as the big names? I bet not many. SiS and Via couldn't hold market share even with their reasonably good reputations.SLI is another story tho, and I wasted all my time whining about the Gbit stuff. I'd like to hear some other opinions on the Gbit and SLI.
JayHu - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
In the block diagram (this may be a little harder to change) you have a 'Supper' I/O block.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
The Block Diagram was provided by ULi, but we were able to make the correction in Supper and Chenal.Diasper - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
Isn't it about time to change your review wording on the audio section of the review? For as long as I can rememeber you guys *always* use the same words - a simple copy/paste. Surely, you should do better and comment about the audio more because the results are different. You don't even comment on what Azalia part was used! As far as I can see the results from on-board audio keep getting better and better (why don't you comment on this) with ever lower CPU utilization (presumably with this board the higher CPU % on the 3D audio is because it is delivering 8.1 surround as opposed to the others 5.1). In fact with numbers as low as >2.5% for 2.1 audio I'm surprised it isn't competetive with hardware solutions. Can we have some figures so we can compare it to? If you provided a comparison with MSI on-board hardware solution and an Audigy 2 standalone card it'd be perfect.So, please change your wording - there is enough to comment on! Also, if you aren't going to change your wording please provide comparison benches so we have proper information and can compare ourselves. A proper comparison is long overdue!
aflanagan - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2631&am...">Link to Audio Comparisons They are doing comparisons on the audio side. Since this was a reference board I am sure they did not expend the time to do a full test on it as the board suppliers might use a different audio chipset.Diasper - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
Thanks for changing stuff - even better that you're looking to do an audio comparison. Certainly, it'll help answer the question whether gamers still need a separate audio card. Because before it was necessary because a) the sound quality was poor and b) the cpu utilisation was very high in comparison. Now with the audio quality having improved massively such that the majority would be happy and cpu utilisation also getting alot better the question arises whether gamers really need a separate card. If you ever did a full review on it it'd be amazing - do a low res tests and then real world / high quality tests to see if there is any difference. Given that most stuff is gpu limited I'll be hedging good HD Azalia will be sufficient - of course the sitution could be very different for those with dual-core (ie easily enough spare cycles such that there might be no-point from a fps point of view of getting a separate sound card)aflanagan - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
Correct link to the last full board review with audio results. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2631&am...">Correct Anandtech Audio Link I was trying to compare game scores to the AMD/ULI system.Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - link
We dropped the sentence with references to onboard SB Live! While we do have older SB Live! benches with Rightmark 1.24 they can not be compared to 2.1 results since 2.1 behaves very differently. While we do have updated results with the SB Live! chip with 2.1 on an Intel board, we have also found the Intel CPU utilization percentages are different than AMD and can not be directly compared. Until we receive an AMD board with a hardware sound solution we will leave out the hardware comparison comments.Thanks for pointing this out.