FIRST LOOK: ULi M1697 for Athlon 64/x2

Graphics Performance and Encoding

The ULi M1697 was competitive in 3DMark Graphics Benchmarks. Compared to other AMD boards tested with the latest 81.xx drivers, the ULi performed middle of the pack in all 3 benchmarks. Since results were so tightly clustered in all the 3 benchmarks, it means that performance was very similar among all the latest boards that we have tested with the 81.85/81.95 drivers. 3DMark05 and 3DMark03 are synthetic benchmarks, but they are designed to test the gaming elements of DirectX 9, using specially written gaming segments.

Encoding results should not be affected by the graphics card used during the encoding benchmarks. This is clearly demonstrated by the archive test results for AutoGK using an AMD 4000+ processor with a wide assortment of other components. The performance range of those encoding tests is just 48.1 to 49.9 - a difference form high to low of just 0.8 frames. Clearly, the biggest influence on this encoding benchmark is the CPU used for testing.