Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

Gaming Performance

A casual glance would lead most anyone to the conclusion that the ULi AGP is the best performance of the group, performing at or near the top of Athlon 64 nF4 Ultra gaming. The PCIe performance is also competitive in every way, but it is not top-of-the-charts as the AGP generally is.

We think that the explanation may be a bit different in looking at these performance charts. ULi is experienced in AGP designs and tweaking, but this is really their first venture into PCIe space. It appears that the PCIe performance is quite good, but it requires a bit more tweaking to bring performance to the excellent performance levels of ULi AGP. When that refinement is complete, the ULi will likely be one of the fastest performers among AMD Athlon 64 boards.

General Performance & Encoding Our Take
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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 Fink
    Repeating....
    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!

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