FIRST LOOK: ULi M1695 PCIe/AGP Socket 939 for Athlon 64
by Wesley Fink on July 13, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
tRAS and Memory Stress Testing
Memory tRAS Recommendations
In past reviews, memory bandwidth tests established that a tRAS setting of 11 or 12 was generally best for nForce2, a tRAS of 10 was optimal for the nForce3 chipset, and a tRAS of 7 was the best choice for the nForce4 chipset. Since this is our first review of a ULi chipset, tRAS timings were first tested with memtest86, a free diagnostic program with its own boot OS that will boot from either a floppy disk or optical disk. Bandwidth of OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, based on Samsung TCCD chips, was measured from tRas 5 to tRAS 13 to determine the best tRAS setting for the ULi chipset.| Memtest86 Bandwidth ULi M1695 with Athlon 64 4000+ |
|
| 5 tRAS | 1874 |
| 6 tRAS | 1913 |
| 7 tRAS | 1953 |
| 8 tRAS | 1953 |
| 9 tRAS | 1994 |
| 10 tRAS | 1994 |
| 11 tRAS | 1994 |
| 12 tRAS | 1874 |
| 13 tRAS | 1974 |
The best bandwidth was achieved with this combination of ULi M1695/4000+/TCCD in the 9 to 11 range, so a mid-value tRAS of 10 was chosen for all tests. It appears that optimal tRAS timings may also be memory dependent, so we recommend a quick series of memtest86 to establish the optimum tRAS timings for other memories on the ULi chipset.
Memory Stress Test
Our memory stress test measures the ability of the ULi to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR), at the lowest memory timings that OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 modules will support. All DIMMs used for stress testing were 512MB double-sided (or double-bank) memory. To make sure that memory performed properly in Dual-Channel mode, memory was only tested using either one dual-channel (2 DIMMs) or 2 dual-channels (4 DIMMs).| Stable DDR400 Timings - One Dual-Channel (2/4 DIMMs populated) |
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| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 1T |
Using two DIMMs in Dual-Channel 128-bit mode, the memory performed in all benchmarks at the fastest 2-2-2-10 timings at default voltage, which was the only memory voltage available.
| Stable DDR400 Timings - 4 DIMMs (4/4 DIMMs populated) |
|
| Clock Speed: | 200MHz |
| CAS Latency: | 2.0 |
| RAS to CAS Delay: | 2T |
| RAS Precharge: | 10T |
| Precharge Delay: | 2T |
| Command Rate: | 2T |
Tests with all four DIMM slots populated on the ULi M1695 required a 2T Command Rate with 4 DIMMs in two dual channels. This is the pattern seen on other top-performing Socket 939 boards. However, the ULi had no problem running at a 200 CPU speed setting with 4 double-sided DIMMs. This performance is certainly competitive with the best that we have seen on nForce4 motherboards for Socket 939.
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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