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  • Kinesis - Thursday, August 18, 2005 - link

    Someone may have asked this, but I didn't see it, my apologies if this is a duplicate. But will these boards support AMD's dual core chips?
  • ElJefe - Saturday, August 20, 2005 - link

    Not only will it support it... it is the only one out that DOES support it truly. It needs no bios revision, it is built into the original bios to support it. asus, gigabyte and abit all warned me that it is highly likely that if you purchase any of their boards and put a dual core cold on them as a new system, the computer wont "post" and just sit there. youll need to buy a 939 chip or borrow someones if it isnt this m1695 asrock board. really, there hasnt been much growth since this has been reviewed in boards, so none have put the dual core bios as their official starter/tested/stable bios yet.

    and from reading 100's of legitimate forum entries from all 3 of those main companies, i can say that I would never do dual core without going for a board that is brand new. the problems and conflicts are rather universal and rather pathetic.

    I am not sure why there isnt talk of this much in forums around here, but if you read the forums of those places you will see obvious problems (abit is the worst at the moment though, which is most unfortunate as they were my favorite company for many years)
  • bozilla - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link

    I'm not sure if someone asked this...but is it possible to use existing AGP card and PCI-e card on the same board with Crossfire for example with this chipset? Let's look at this like this. I have an AGP X800XT PE now and I want to buy a X850XT PE Crossfire edition in PCI-E and put both in the motherboard that comes out with this chipset. Possible?
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    nVidia has sent us the following information:

    "The ULI board isn't certified for SLI. It hasn't been submitted."

    nVidia added that modified nVidia drivers generally indicate a board that is not certified.
  • nserra - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link

    Well it isn't selling any way, why certify it?
  • ElJefe - Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - link

    just a tip:
    someone said that Asrock usa isnt going to sell this mobo in the US of A, that is not true, i called today and it definitely is going to be sold here very soon.

  • mino - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    Actually this is understandable. Why bother to certify an preview board ? For a company like Uli this would be a waste of time and money.
  • deathwalker - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    I'm looking forward to the release of Mobo's on this chipset. I want to upgrade to a socket 939 system and at the same time be able to keep costly components that I have(6800gt agp card for one)for use in it. I hope we se a micro ATX version that I can drop in a Aspire X-Qpack case. Good job Anandtech for picking up on this upcoming release and covering it for your dedicated subscribers. I don't think Tom's Hardware even knows this exists..not a whisper on there site about this chipset.
  • Zebo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Not really because I already bought a AN8 Utlra.. A, as in Abit. That's really what ULi needs for wide-spread adoption.. ABIT/DFI/ASUS/Gigabyte/MSI branded boards with wild OC options.. not Asrock/tul/ECS. I waited and waited for a decent SiS755 board which was also very promising.. which never came. I'm betting the same will happen here, especially so now that board makers have to make room in their stable for ATI based chipsets.
  • nserra - Monday, August 8, 2005 - link

    But Uli offers AGP 8X, no one does this, so they will be “forced” to support it.
  • Some1ne - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Maybe this has already been pointed out, but running an AMD64 system at a 400 FSB with a lowered multiplier is a rather dubious accomplishment. My MSI board has no problems running at 400 FSB with my Athlon64 3000+ if I drop the CPU multiplier to 6x and the HTT to 2.5x, but this setting is actually slower than doing 352 FSB with 7x on the CPU and 3x on the HTT. Calling being able to run at 400 MHz FSB a "100% overclock" is just plain irresponsible, and implies that the author doesn't have a complete understanding about how the "FSB" (which is really a misnomer, as the AMD64 chips have *no* FSB in the traditional sense) works in the AMD64 context. Running at 400x7 is absolutely no different than running at 200x14 with an AMD chip (if memory and HTT speeds are also maintained at 200 MHz and 1000 MHz, respectively, which they were in the article), having the 400 instead of the 200 does not do a thing for performance (do some benchmarks if you don't believe me...if the CPU, HTT, and RAM speeds are kept the same, increasing the "FSB" speed on an Athlon64 system will not do a damn thing to improve performance), because none of the actual hardware is being clocked any differently. The only thing that specifying a 400 MHz "FSB" tests, in this case, is the board's clock frequency generator, which really isn't all that impressive.
  • Wesley Fink - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Read carefully, I do not call the 400 "FSB" as you state, I have called it CPU clock speed. Without memory voltage adjustments the only way to test the claim of proper operation at 400 CPU clock fequency was to lower the multiplier and the memory speed. The only thing that is different here from our normal testing at lower multipliers is the lowering of memory speed as well - to 100 (200DDR), which is 200 (400DDR) at a CPU clock speed of 400. The HT was lowered to 3X, a value commonly used in the 300 to 320 range as well. The CPU is indeed running at spec 2.8GHz at 400x7 and the memory at spec DDR400, but the CPU clock frequency is double, or a 100% increase at stock speed.

    Certainly running memory at less than spec is allowing a higher frequency, we would expect a top-out at around 318 to 320 starting from DDR400 with this TCCD. It is still a rare board that is stable at a 400 setting, though there are a few others that can do this.

    What would you suggest in benchmarking here? To not check the 400 clock frequency would paint an inaccurate picture of the board's potential. We carefully spelled out what we did, how it was different, and why we did it. What more do you want?
  • Some1ne - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    You're correct, you didn't call it the FSB...I'm just so used to people referring to it like that. At any rate however, calling it the "CPU clock speed" is misleading as well, as this is typically interpreted to mean the speed that the CPU is actually clocked at (i.e. the 2.8 GHz you had on the FX-57 as a final result of the 400x7 setting). Perhaps a better name for this setting would be "base system clock frequency", since that's essentially what it is...it's the frequency that the board's clock generator runs at, and is used to derive the frequency used for the other components.

    That said, my main objection was to referring to being able to run at a 400 MHz "base system clock frequency" as being a 100% overclock, because it's really not (increasing the speed on the clock generator really does not count as overclocking). In order to attain a 100% overclock, the CPU would have to be run at 5.6 GHz, which is completely impossible with an FX-57. As you pointed out in your post (and in the article), the *only* thing that was overclocked at all was the HTT bus, by a mere 200 MHz. The CPU and RAM ran at stock speeds. This makes this a 0% overclock (raising the HTT speed above 1000 MHz really doesn't do much), and all it shows is that the board's clock generator will work at 400 MHz. No hardware other than the clock generator was affected by selecting a speed of 400 MHz (that's what the multipliers are for).

    In reference to the benchmarking, what I meant was that if you were to take your FX-57 test system, and run it at stock settings and do some benchmarks like PCMark or SiSoft Sandra or whatever, and then run it at 400 MHz, 7x CPU multiplier, 2.5x HTT (or 3x if the board does not offer 2.5x), 100 MHz memclock index, and run the same benchmarks again, the results will be exactly the same (and they certainly won't be twice as good, which is what could be expected in the event of a "100% overclock"), meaning that just setting the clock generator at 400 MHz doesn't have any impact on performance at all, and doesn't say anything about how well the board will actually overclock...all it says is that you can actually select the higher clock generator settings without the board itself failing.
  • mino - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Actually this approach - testing maximum base frequency the board is capable of should be tested, I do not care about memory overclock. but I DO care how high teh board can go since the are Sempron 2500+ chips with 7x max. multiplier and these need such insane clockgen freqs to achieve some substantial overclocks. Actually any board not capable hitting 350 base freq. at these terms(lowered memfreq) should not be regarded an OC board. or it should be aslo noted that the board is suitable only for higre end overclocking. You know, around here OCing is a way to make something from nothing and better board shoul pay itself in decrease in processor price required to achieve certian level of performance. BTW mem speed is in no way important on K8, the timing are.
  • mino - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    The memfreq comment refers to freqs above DDR400, of course.
  • NullSubroutine - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Anyone know if there will be any Socket 754 versions with this chipset?
  • g33k - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    By the time Skt 754 becomes obsolete, AGP based x800 and 6xxx cards will also be obsolete. Hence, users will replace both at the same time.

    The only reason for this board is if someone wants a dualcore cpu and has an AGP card. But that is a very small percentage of the market.
  • deathwalker - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    I think not!! I would love to be able to continue to use my $400 investment in my 68oogt graphics card while at the same time be able to go to a socket 939 platform and preserve the ability to upgrade graphics to PCIe at a future date if desired.
  • Shinei - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    That's not true at all--right now I'm running an Athlon XP and would like to upgrade to an S939 processor... I can't justify dropping $800 to replace my 6800GT AND get a new motherboard/processor, but I CAN justify $300 for a ULi board and a cheap Venice processor.
  • Araemo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    In the graph of the maximum FSB clock at lower multipliers.. is this board the only one that was retested with the FX-57? If so, that seems a little unfair to the other boards listed.
  • Wesley Fink - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    The 400 graph has been removed. After considering the questions here it is fair to say the ULi tests were not run under the same test conditions (due to no DDR Voltage controls and limited vCore adjustments) and should not be directly compared. The 242 remains since it was achieved with the same test conditions.
  • Wesley Fink - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Yes, this is the only board using the FX57 in OC testing, but we will be testing with the FX57 in the future. Yes, that makes it an unfair comparison.

    It really was not possible to use our normal OC tests because the Reference board has no memory voltage adjustments at all. We stated this very clearly in the reviews. The option was to report very low results, or to make changes to the test to show how high the board could actually go in overclock (400 clock speed). We chose to show what the board could do on OC, but the results are not directly comparable to past results.
  • Lonyo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    OCZ BOOSTER FFS!!!!
  • Aquila76 - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    So if you want to run SLI, you have to use that riser card, right? How exactly does that fit in a standard ATX case? The cards are 90 degrees from their normal position. I understand that this is a good board if you're going to use older AGP cards and want an upgrade path; but I would think they could make it a lot cheaper if they left SLI capability off as it seems rather pointless in this format.
  • kmmatney - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    I thought the same thing, but yes, its just a prrof of concept - the retail board makers will implement it without the need for a riser card.
  • MarkB - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    I think it's more of a proof of concept for showing off the chipset's capabilities, instead of making a whole new reference board to house the 2 x8 pci-e slots.

    I doubt any retail board would use the riser approach.

  • Sunbird - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Here is South Africa the ASRock 939A8X-m based in this ULi chipset has arrived at our local reseller last week.

    Its a mATX board and has SATA raid and all the other usual stuff. Near the bottom price range of the local market (aka cheap).
  • grug2k - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    The AsRock 939AX-M is NOT a ULi M1695 board. It's an old AGP-only board based on the ULi M1689 chipset.
  • lsman - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Computex2005 show also has Jetway A695DAG, Chaintech S1695-2
  • WT - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    This board should be on the short list (hehe, so short there is only one name on it) of boards for the DIY builder looking to keep their current AGP card and move to PCI Express down the road. There are a lot of users that fit that description so this board makes sense in every way. The only downside will be whether the boards are actually produced by some quality vendors who are not stuck on the Nvidia bandwagon.

    My S754 setup is adequate for any game that I play, so I should be able to make another year on it. After that, S939 and a 3800+ x2 makes more sense, but after buying that, I won't have the $ left to splurge on a mid-high end PCI Express video card. My 6800 cost $295 when I bought it, so moving that to the S939 setup makes financial sense.
  • AMDScooter - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    ^^^ Same. My OC'd S754/Clawhammer plays all current games fine. Seeing as none of the titles I play currently can take advantage of SMP now anyway I am really in no rush to migrate. That combined with the fact my X800 XTPE on the AGP bus still has plenty of bandwidth to spare. Also, the lack of NV drivers for all games to be able to take advantage of 2 video cards makes me lean more for the ATI chipset soloution anyway. My2c..
  • MarkB - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    How about using the OCZ memory volatage booster card for the overclocking tests.. would be crazy to see performance at 400 FSB and high clocked ram.
  • SpaceRanger - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    I thought the OCZ Memory thing was just a voltage stabilizer, not a booster. Maybe I am getting the 2 modules confused..
  • Lonyo - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Nah, I'm fauirly sure it adds voltage adjustments up to either 3.2 or 3.5v.


    "The OCZ DDR Booster with patent-pending PowerClean technology supplies “cleaner” power to the installed memory modules and allows increasing their voltage above the rated one"

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/oc...">http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/oc...

    "in the extreme right position, the memory receives a voltage of 3.9v."

    It would be a little unfair since no other tests have been run with the booster, but it would be nice to get a sneak peek at possible performance of very high speed RAM with AMD64 and a high FSB. Some nice OCZ VX in there with the booster and 3.5v or so would be something worth seeing.
  • nserra - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Wesley Fink there are some questions unanswered, yet.

    The performance in IDE and SATA is impressive.
    Does it have SATA NCQ?

    You should also ask about this riser card, because the final version must have 3 PCIe 16X slots, with 2 working has 8X, I doubt that the riser card is a good working solution, because if I put the board in a case how can I connect the monitor cables or even insert the cards on the riser ?

    Also how does it have 2 PCIe x4 (or x2) if it has only 20 PCIe lanes, or does this mean only one will work in 4X mode and 2 in 2X mode?

    Also ask about when we should expect mobo’s with those chipset start selling?
    Example: http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA...">http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939Dual-SATA...
  • Wesley Fink - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Yes, ULi tells me this south bridge board does support NCQ - as do the coming M1573 and M1575 south bridges.

    I do not know the final solution on the riser card. This is a Reference Board for qualification. Manufacturers will decide what they wish to implement. As I stated in the review I do agree the riser is not a likely production feature.

    As you can see in the BIOS picture on page 4, the options are 1 x4 or 2 x2 - total 4 lanes added to the 16 equals 20. ATI actually has 22 lanes in their chipset and use the extra 2 lanes for communication between north/south bridge.
  • joex444 - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Notice that in the BIOS screenshot it says:
    1x16 1x4
    1x16 2x2
    2x8 1x4

    So, you have a choice of running 1 x4 card or two x2 cards.

    Can you run x4 cards in an x4 slot at x2 speed? Heck, where are the x4 cards anyways, can't say I've actually seen an x4 slot on a board before, either.
  • jpkomm - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    I asked ASrock's US sales division the same thing. They said the "939Dual-SATA2" motherboard will not be available in the US market. Of course, I'm not too sure if that is unshakable or not. They may or many not release it here; however, they may do it but just in a different flavor. Your guess is as good as mine. I love the reviews pumping up this chipset, but I have yet to find anything solid as to US releases. Guess I will just sit patiently and wait.
  • lsman - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    OCworkbench.com review this board as these jumpers are for
    "FUTURE_CPU_PORT"...Socket M2..
    so may be the board to look for..
    http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/asrock/reviews/939...">http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/asrock/reviews/939...
  • Xenoterranos - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Anyone know where/when to get one of these. This is exactly what I need, as I and probably thousands of you have an AGP card and don't want to spring for PCIe yet.
  • arfan - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    it very dissapointed, anandtech use M$
  • brownba - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    It is quite disappointing how children these days do not possess simple spelling and grammar skills.
  • mino - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link

    Also the use of .NET by AT is understandable. What bothers me are the reasons for this.
    .NET is a really good platform to build on. And that IS dangerous.
    We don't want M$ to rule the Milky Way, do we ?
  • ryanv12 - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    This board is looking very good. I hope they come in at much lower prices as well.
  • neogodless - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    Very good to see competition like this, particularly as I slowly warm up to spending the money for a dual-core Athlon system... I should be able to keep a lot of my old components such as memory and AGP video card!
  • reactor - Friday, August 5, 2005 - link

    quite an amazing board, hope these become popular so the prices/availability get better. i am very interesting in getting one. 400 fsb is insane! good stuff anandtech as usual.

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