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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Sabresiberian - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Dang! I just bought an AGP mainboard! LOL! Well, I probably saved $100 and money was a concern for me.Glad to see this come out still, hats off to ULI :)
Wish it had come out 6 months or more ago, I think that would have been more timely, but better late than never, heh.
nserra - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#Wesley FinkRepeating....
I noted that the speed of the AGP is very good, but vs the older 1689 is it equal, higher or is the 1689 even higher. Can you do some 939A8X-M test just to check?
Also your explanation to #20 is confusing (at least to me), isn’t HT (200x5) = 1000HT speed and the chipset can do 400 (2,3,4X400) ?
#28 I think Uli chipsets as been always one of the faster with hard disk transfers (a lot faster), the older don’t this I don’t know, also I don’t know the CPU % hit.
QV - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
This looks like an interesting board. When I found out that K8T890 doesn't support dual-core, I figured my next machine would be nF4, but this looks good enough that by the time I build my next machine (which will probably be months away, for money reasons), I may very well use a board based on this chipset.Also, speaking of dual AGP/PCI-E solutions, can't the VIA PT880 Pro do the same? I know it's for a different platform, but it doesn't seem to be a hack like some boards seem to use, and ASRock makes one or two boards based on it. What's the story there? Can the PT880 Pro really also do the triple graphics interface, and platform differences aside, how does it stack up against the M1695?
L3p3rM355i4h - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Interesting. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of the KT890.MarkHark - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Does anybody know if this ULI south bridge supports NCQ and how its hard drive I/O performance compares to Nforce4 and SIS?smn198 - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#25 If I was after AGP with the possibility to upgrade to PCIe without changing motherboard then yes I would be interested but I doubt that this feature will interest OEMs. The cost of a full motherboard will be pushed up once features such as SATA2 and Gbit LAN are added. The possibility of two full x16 PCIe slots is the most interesting thing to me as it could add a bit of future proofing.I would be interested if it had been out a few months and I wasn't going to be an early adopter. 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. Good luck to them though! We need another high-end chipset maker for AMD.
Zebo - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Abit and Gigabyte both have full-blown boards in the works.----------------
Well that certainly makes things interesting.. Thanks again.. And I take back my comment about DOA like SIS 75x seems to be:)
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#25 - Competitive and much cheaper also works - with the unique AGP on PCIe to get your attention.smn198 - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
#15 - I agree but also, they don't need to show that they are as competitive as the nForce4, they need to be better.fishy - Wednesday, July 13, 2005 - link
Exciting news to me:
_I still have an 'ol Asus/ Ali motherboard
running, and it has been "very good to me" :)
_I'm still looking for a AMD 64 motherboard
(bought an NF4 board a few months ago
and got rid of it really fast, too many
problems)
Asus, get on this fast, please!