As we reported form Computex, the talk of the show was ATI's new Crossfire dual-video solution for AMD and Intel. Part of that talk was the development work done with ULi on the ATI South Bridge and the cross-compatibility of the ULi South Bridge using the ATI chipset. ULi is what remains of the ALi chipset division of Acer, and this now independent chipmaker has been very busy in several arenas. In addition to South Bridges which can work with the chipsets of other manufacturers, ULi also makes single-chip and dual-chip solutions for Athlon 64.

ATI certainly had the spotlight with their new chipset, but one of the newest and most interesting chipsets introduced at Computex was also from ULi - the M1695 HyperTransport PCI Express Tunnel Chip for AMD Athlon 64 platforms.

Just a month after the Computex launch, ULi has provided a Reference Board for their new chipset based on the M1695 coupled with a M1567 South Bridge. This combination is significant because it provides a full x16 PCIe video slot with an AGP 8X slot. ULi tells us that this is a full-performance AGP slot without compromise. We have seen others try to provide AGP support (ECS, Biostar) on a PCIe board by deriving the AGP from PCI, but these solutions were 50 to 60% the performance of a true 8X AGP, negating much of the reason for the AGP slot. This ULi solution, however, is a full-performance AGP 8X, combined with a full-performance x16 PCIe.

The ULi M1695/M1567 is really even more as it also supports PCI graphics. With this ULi chipset, you can simultaneously use PCI Express X16, AGP 8X, and PCI graphics. As ULi puts it in their Press Release:
"M1695's innovative HyperTransport tunnel architecture integrates non-blocking symmetrical HyperTransportTM 2.0 links which enables motherboard manufacturers and system integrators to pair up M1695 with other high performance HyperTransport-based chipsets and bridge devices either natively or via the HTXTM connector. When coupled with ULi's M1567 south bridge, the combination offers motherboard manufacturers the unprecedented capability to support PCI Express x16, AGP 8X, PCI graphics cards simultaneously on the same mainboard. Such capability makes it possible to create a fully surrounding virtual reality environment using multiple high resolution displays driven by the three graphics technologies residing in the same computer system."

ULi M1695 Chipset
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  • stmok - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link

    Try that...Does that work?
    [url]http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnew...[/url]
  • stmok - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link


    Check it out...ASRock's 939Dual-SATA2
    [url]http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnew...[/url

    Supports AGP, PCI-Express, and a CPU Upgrade feature (Supports Socket M2).
  • Manzelle - Thursday, July 14, 2005 - link

    #39 - Ditto.
  • saiku - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    aha, I can now stop thinking about what I'll get on Ebay for my 6800GT AGP card. Awesome !
  • karlreading - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    number 34 - ur so silly.
    i run a amd system and a p4 system. believe me, my pentium 4 is far less stable and BSOD's way more thsan my AMD system.
    so there!
    Karlos!
  • Avalon - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    #34 - "Underdog CPU on underdog chipset manufactured by underdog mobo maker. This sounds like nice BSOD generator for me.
    Blank"

    Since when were Gigabyte and Abit underdog board makers? They've been around for a while. Anyway, Anand said he had no problems at all with his reference board, so why would you believe that just because the board would be in your hands that it would suddenly become unstable? Afraid it's the AMD? Think again. In fact, while you're doing that, enjoy your Prescott throttling and causing your computer to shut down. You must save tons of money on your electric bill in the winter.
  • PhoneZ - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    #25 "I'd want to know what the drivers are like and no matter how good this chipset is, I doubt it's driver support will be as good as the nVidia."

    Have you seen how bad the nVidia nForce support has been?
    Checkout the nVidia mobo forum:
    http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=a549406b86b65...

    The Firewall has never worked, the nVRAID while versatile has numerous quirks (Randomly degraded arrays and lock ups with NCQ/TCQ enabled), the nForce3 has compatibility problems with nVidia video cards. Also with some new nForce4 boards the current driver version doesnt have audio support so your forced to use the realtek one on the CD, which sucks.

    The nForce 4 has been out for quite some time now, and the problems people are having seem to go un-addressed. I have and Nforce4 SLI board and they can be run stable but you have to disable features that are potential selling features of the chipset.
  • Furen - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    wow val, stop fanning the flames ^^
  • val - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    Underdog CPU on underdog chipset manufactured by underdog mobo maker. This sounds like nice BSOD generator for me.
  • Megatomic - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link

    Oh yeah, this is what I've been hoping for. With one of these boards I can go SD core or X2 and continue to use my 6800GT AGP8X card. Oh happy day! :D

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