FIRST LOOK: ULi M1697 for Athlon 64/x2

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.