FIRST LOOK: ULi M1697 for Athlon 64/x2

Overclocking

With an incomplete set of controls for overclocking, it was not possible to test overclocking using our standard OC setups. With production boards due for review very soon, the decision was made to delay OC tests until we reviewed production boards. This will remove the issue of testing with non-standard setups that make comparison of OC performance to previous OC results very difficult.

Memory Stress Testing

Since this is a new chipset, the best setting for tRAS was first determined. With MemTest86, tRAS performance was the same at tRAS settings of 6 to 11, with a bandwidth fall-off at 5 and 12 tRAS settings. This means that any setting from 6 to 11 tRAS will work well with this chipset. We chose to use a tRAS setting of 7 for consistency with other chipsets such as the NVIDIA nForce4 and ATI RD480.

The ULi M1697 Reference easily handles 2-2-2-7-1T timings at stock speed, as do almost any of the current boards for AMD Socket 939 from NVIDIA, SiS, VIA, ATI, and ULi. By default, ULi configured the Command Rate as 1T with a single pair of DIMMs in a dual-channel configuration. Two DIMMs in single channel mode required 2T Command Rate.

Running four double-sided 512MB or 1GB DIMMs is much more demanding than running two DS DIMMs, and ULi behaved as expected. Like every board that we have tested, except the DFI RDX200, we needed to drop the Command Rate to 2T with 4 DS DIMMs. With 4 DIMMs, the M1697 remained stable with the same aggressive 2-2-2-7 timings used for two DS DIMMs.

Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
CAS Latency:	2.0
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	7T*
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	2T

*7T was determined by MemTest86 benchmarks to deliver the widest bandwidth with the ULi M1697 chipset. While the board would operate at tRAS of 5T or lower, all benchmarks were run at 7T.