When released the "J " version of this board sports both Gb Ethernet and 8 Channel ALC850 Audio. Look for the EPoX EP-9U1697GLI-J ... I'm definitely getting this mobo.
We still do not have confirmation if this model will be released in the US. We certainly have expressed our feelings to EPoX that this is the model that should be offered here. Also, the ALC-850 is not real upgrade from a quality of audio output aspect compared to the ALC-655. We lobbied for the ALC-883 as the cost differential is minimal compared to the ALC-850 but EPoX is betting most people buying the board will upgrade the audio for gaming anyway. We think the ALC-883 would still suffice for the casual gamer and probably for the more serious gamer on a budget from a performance/audio output aspect. It is hard to get excited about a SB X-FI when it cost $30 more than the motherboard in this market segment in our opinion. We think this is still an issue. Overall, the quality of the board is very good and the results speak for themselves.
Pretty sure we'll get the "J" version in Europe, "J" versions are available on other Epox models over here. Also glad to see that the Epox board was not unduly handicapped by x8 lane PCI-E as opposed to x16 lane. All in all, even in the bog standard guise, it's a very good board for the money.
Those numbers are the initial value the memory will run if the HTT is 200. They all scale based on the HTT speed, so 1:1 = 200. All the other numbers are dividers that allow for running the memory at a ratio speed based on the HTT i.e. 133/200 = 4/6.
The memory speeds in the review were Auto, 100 MHz, 133MHz, 160MHz, 200MHz, 218 MHz, 240MHz. Is there a 1:1 setting so that the ram speed increases with the FSB? It would be a shame not to have that seeing as how the ram can be overvoltaged to 3.2V
Hey, this board looks great! The main drawbacks are the two silly component choices: no Gb ethernet and no HD sound (not like Nv boards have this anyway). Since my home network is 10/100 and I'm not an sound freak (and I have some 5.1 digital Live! cards to throw in if need be) those aren't drawbacks.
I have a A8R-MVP that rectifies those problems at the cost of high vCore options.....pm me if you want to trade :P
Since Epox has had so many issues in the past with using poor capacitors (sorry I mistyped that, I mean crap capacitors) From GSC and TEAPO I think it deserves a mention that this board is using high quality Sanyo MV-WX capacitors for the VRM section and everything 1000uF and above on the board, and even not cheaping out on the lower value caps by using the top capacitor brand Rubycon for them...
And if the editor can not distinguish from a good and bad capacitor brand please atleast post high resolution pictures of the capacitors so people looking for the info will find it without being as wierd as I am and recognize them by the style of their vents and type of colors used ;-)
quote: And if the editor can not distinguish from a good and bad capacitor brand please atleast post high resolution pictures of the capacitors so people looking for the info will find it without being as wierd as I am and recognize them by the style of their vents and type of colors used ;-)
We did make mention on the front page and the features page about the high quality components used on the board. However, we did not specify the brand names or sizes utilized. We will do this in the future if the components selected warrants mention as it would assist the readers without your (not weird) ability to pick out the brand names. I did take a high resolution shot of the capacitors as I surprised by Epox utilizing these on a value board. I should have followed my instincts and posted the shot on the first or last page. Thanks for the comments. :)
Again with the cheap sound and fan heatsink. When I see Realtek sound i think jubk. But then ui see a NON-HD ALC-655 I think even less of the board. I mean what did they save a whole quarter by going to the cheap non-hd sound? Let alone the pOS that is realtek.
Then instead of juts putting a large passive heatsink they put a small one with a fan. Fans will wear out and even when working 100% still make noise.
Good chipset but another example of the bean counters killing decent sound, PCIe ethernet, good heatsink, etc...
I was thinking about building my first SLI rig off the ASRock 939SLI32 board reviewed here a few days ago but I'm glad I held off... it seems like the EPoX is a better overclocker. I already own two ASRock 939Duals with M1695, they overclock pretty decent but are held back by the vcore... I even tried one of the volt mods and it didn't work out for me. And yes, the BIOS on the M1695 board is the wackiest I have ever used, there's all sorts of hardware it still won't recognize. I think this is the most I've ever flashed a BIOS on any mobo I've owned. But I think things are under control now... ;)
Why does the EPoX M1967 board beat the ASRock M1697 board in most of the gaming benchmarks despite the fact that the EPoX's PCI Express lanes are only x8 in SLI? According to the review of the ASRock board here that board is supposed to be running x16 in both lanes in SLI mode. Is it just that there are no PCIe cards out there yet that are maxing out PCIe x8 bandwidth?
Anyway as long as my gaming isn't going to be held back by x8 PCIe (and it sure loks that way now) I think this EPoX board is a winner... thanks AnandTech for the great benchies!
How long do you run prime95/superpi on an overclock to verify stability?
I ask because I've just RMAd a board and CPU that could not run prime95 for more than about 5 hours at stock speeds, but it does run for about 5-6 hours before it shows an error. The replacement board and CPU have not arrived yet, so I haven't been able to check on a similar system yet.
quote: How long do you run prime95/superpi on an overclock to verify stability?
We typically run the following or a combination thereof for both stock and overclocked conditions. We might utilize additional components or various combinations not listed in our test system and use such applications as Office2003, Nero, or Photoshop depending upon the situation.
A. Prime95- Priority 1 - 30 minutes (if it passes go to step B, if not, tune until it can pass, this includes memory/voltage/fsb settings)
B. Prime95- Priority 10 - 4~12 hours (depends on the board and target market)
1. SuperPI - 3 iterations with settings at 32m generally, sometimes less.
2. 3DMark01 - Demo Loop 2 hours
3. 3DMark05 - Demo Loop 2 hours
4. Prime95/3DMark05 - Prime set at priority 1 - 3DM05 Loop - 4 hours
5. WorldBench 5 - 3 iterations (optional, depends on board, target market, or new chipset)
6. Standard test suite - 3 iterations of each application.
7. Game Testing - 4~8 hours of actual gameplay, AOE III, BF2, GTR/Legends, Guild Wars or others depending upon the software image.
8. MemTest86 - 2~6 hours (depends on board, target market, or new chipset)
Please realize that a combination of components, drivers, bios settings, and software loads can all account for failures that are outside of the true capability of the board. Our test systems generally use premium components that assist in the ability of the board to pass these tests along with constant climate control settings. The amount of hours required to debug a system is sometimes staggering. Of course we cannot test every combination of components or software available so at times a certain combination that fails for a user is not seen by us. I hope this answers your question.
Thats slightly better than I expected, but I have one last question: During the extended prime95 test, are other things done on it in the meantime(the 3dmark runs or gaming or some such?).
In personal use I like to see at least 24 hours of prime95, but I FULLY understand that that would be even more time consuming for you guys, since you have to verify stability at multiple settings per board per review... 12 hours is welcome to me.
I like to run prime95 or other burn-in programs (like Sandra, etc) overnight just to be on the safe side, but in my experience if I am pushing an OC too hard I have always had burn-in fail within half an hour. Of course from reading countless other postings on OC message boards, YMMV :)
To keep things topical here, my ASRock M1695 boards can bump an A64 Winnie 3000+ from 1.8 to 2.25 GHZ (250 HTT), and an A64 X2 Manchester 3800+ from 2 GHz to 2.4 GHz (240 HTT). After that the boards just run out of volts. If I try to push the HTT any higher the system doesn't even boot.
Did you make sure to check your RAM before RMAing that mobo and CPU? Sometimes if you have a bad register somewhere, a burn-in program will take a little time to reach it and conk out. Especially something like superpi which has such a low memory footprint. You might wanna run Memtest86 on your box as soon as you get a chance, if you haven't already.
My RAM passed memtest86+ on both this motherboard, and my old NF7-S(Once I found out one ram slot on that board was bad and moved the second stick to the other slot, I left it running memtest86 all day and it never errored. But I wanted dual channel memory again, so I ordered the ASRock 939DualSata2 and a 3200+, and memtest86 passes, but prime95 dies eventually.)
Technically, registers are in the CPU, and I think ram uses a different terminology, but I know what you meant. As far as I can tell, my RAM is fine, and I don't believe it is a windows problem(I've only had one crash in the week I've had the board: Winamp crashed on me randomly last night.. UT2k4 and NS/TS(Half-life mods) run fine)
My PSU should be plenty for this board(According to people in the ASRock thread in the forums, my PSU is higher end than others who have this system running well, and voltages are stable according to the mobo)... Sooo... I have no way of knowing if it was the board or the CPU, since I don't have any other S939 boards around. I'm just glad newegg let me return it with no hassle. (And I was smart enough to order the opteron 146 this time around instead of the 3200+.. but I never even got around to touching the overclocking on the 3200+. I don't start overclocking until I know prime95 is stable at stock settings)
On my mobile barton I experienced similar symptoms of a too-high overclock: Prime95 would error out relatively quickly, sound would start screwing up(I went the quick way, I'd load prime95, and the 3dmark03 demo.. nice heavy stress and audio(and sometimes video) would start going weird well before a hard lock.) And that CPU and ram still handle memtest86 and prime95 fine.
I'm also curious how you know a system is 'super pi' stable?
As far as I can tell, it's more a speed test than a stability test in the sense that prime95 is..
Super Pi seems to be calculating a fresh value for pi, but not comparing it to the known value? Is there an easy way to compare its output to the known value?
I had corrected it on the final draft and somehow it still made it in. My fault for not catching it once the article went live last night. It is corrected now as are the ascending chart figures.
The ULi M1695 is all about upgradeability and the ASrock implementation uses a 20pin PSU where as the Epox implementation needs a 24pin connection. Based on the benchmarks it also looks like you will need to purchase a PCI-e x1 gigabit controller.
Speaking from experience, my biggest gripe on the ASrock M1695 is the BIOS is very quirky and can be very very slow to POST.
Epox is the king if you are an overclocker and overall performance is very impressive compaired to the ASrock ULi M1695.
8Mb throughput? Are you sure that's not a mistake?
The only comment on Epox's ethernet score was that it was not competitive...700Mb vs 8Mb...I'd say something is wrong, or a typo?
The actual number is 98.9Mb/s. Our graph engine has a small issue with variances that wide. It placed the 9 into the description field. I updated the text statement to reflect this issue. Thank you.
While you're updating, you might want to correct the research error that the RTL8201 is a "PCI based solution". It is not, it's just a PHY to the ULi chip's integrated 10/100 MAC.
Oh, and when are you finally going to stop attributing memory performance to chipsets on AMD64?
The Epox EP-9U1697 GLi displayed superb stability with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel operation at the settings of 2-2-2-7, but it required the command rate to be increased to 2T.
hmm and apparantly all the audio utilization graphs as well :) And since we're still at it, since for storage performance differs only from southbridge to southbridge and not from board to board, it might ease up those graphs to just display one representative for each + the board in review.
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35 Comments
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custommadename - Sunday, March 19, 2006 - link
I thought so, but I wanted to make sure. That's great. So this board is pretty much a good overclocking board for a great price. I'm hooked.UJMA - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
When released the "J " version of this board sports both Gb Ethernet and 8 Channel ALC850 Audio. Look for the EPoX EP-9U1697GLI-J ... I'm definitely getting this mobo.Gary Key - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
We still do not have confirmation if this model will be released in the US. We certainly have expressed our feelings to EPoX that this is the model that should be offered here. Also, the ALC-850 is not real upgrade from a quality of audio output aspect compared to the ALC-655. We lobbied for the ALC-883 as the cost differential is minimal compared to the ALC-850 but EPoX is betting most people buying the board will upgrade the audio for gaming anyway. We think the ALC-883 would still suffice for the casual gamer and probably for the more serious gamer on a budget from a performance/audio output aspect. It is hard to get excited about a SB X-FI when it cost $30 more than the motherboard in this market segment in our opinion. We think this is still an issue. Overall, the quality of the board is very good and the results speak for themselves.
UJMA - Friday, March 24, 2006 - link
Pretty sure we'll get the "J" version in Europe, "J" versions are available on other Epox models over here. Also glad to see that the Epox board was not unduly handicapped by x8 lane PCI-E as opposed to x16 lane. All in all, even in the bog standard guise, it's a very good board for the money.Good review by the way!
superkdogg - Friday, March 17, 2006 - link
^^^^^^^Those numbers are the initial value the memory will run if the HTT is 200. They all scale based on the HTT speed, so 1:1 = 200. All the other numbers are dividers that allow for running the memory at a ratio speed based on the HTT i.e. 133/200 = 4/6.
custommadename - Friday, March 17, 2006 - link
The memory speeds in the review were Auto, 100 MHz, 133MHz, 160MHz, 200MHz, 218 MHz, 240MHz. Is there a 1:1 setting so that the ram speed increases with the FSB? It would be a shame not to have that seeing as how the ram can be overvoltaged to 3.2Vsuperkdogg - Thursday, March 16, 2006 - link
Hey, this board looks great! The main drawbacks are the two silly component choices: no Gb ethernet and no HD sound (not like Nv boards have this anyway). Since my home network is 10/100 and I'm not an sound freak (and I have some 5.1 digital Live! cards to throw in if need be) those aren't drawbacks.I have a A8R-MVP that rectifies those problems at the cost of high vCore options.....pm me if you want to trade :P
kmmatney - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Its great having low cost Socket 939 boards, but where are the Socket 939 Semprons?Per Hansson - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Since Epox has had so many issues in the past with using poor capacitors (sorry I mistyped that, I mean crap capacitors) From GSC and TEAPO I think it deserves a mention that this board is using high quality Sanyo MV-WX capacitors for the VRM section and everything 1000uF and above on the board, and even not cheaping out on the lower value caps by using the top capacitor brand Rubycon for them...And if the editor can not distinguish from a good and bad capacitor brand please atleast post high resolution pictures of the capacitors so people looking for the info will find it without being as wierd as I am and recognize them by the style of their vents and type of colors used ;-)
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
We did make mention on the front page and the features page about the high quality components used on the board. However, we did not specify the brand names or sizes utilized. We will do this in the future if the components selected warrants mention as it would assist the readers without your (not weird) ability to pick out the brand names. I did take a high resolution shot of the capacitors as I surprised by Epox utilizing these on a value board. I should have followed my instincts and posted the shot on the first or last page. Thanks for the comments. :)
Marlin1975 - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Again with the cheap sound and fan heatsink. When I see Realtek sound i think jubk. But then ui see a NON-HD ALC-655 I think even less of the board. I mean what did they save a whole quarter by going to the cheap non-hd sound? Let alone the pOS that is realtek.Then instead of juts putting a large passive heatsink they put a small one with a fan. Fans will wear out and even when working 100% still make noise.
Good chipset but another example of the bean counters killing decent sound, PCIe ethernet, good heatsink, etc...
jimveta - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
One quibble: the onboard Nforce4 ethernet controller is NOT a PCIe device. None of the onboard devices are in fact.kb3edk - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
I was thinking about building my first SLI rig off the ASRock 939SLI32 board reviewed here a few days ago but I'm glad I held off... it seems like the EPoX is a better overclocker. I already own two ASRock 939Duals with M1695, they overclock pretty decent but are held back by the vcore... I even tried one of the volt mods and it didn't work out for me. And yes, the BIOS on the M1695 board is the wackiest I have ever used, there's all sorts of hardware it still won't recognize. I think this is the most I've ever flashed a BIOS on any mobo I've owned. But I think things are under control now... ;)Why does the EPoX M1967 board beat the ASRock M1697 board in most of the gaming benchmarks despite the fact that the EPoX's PCI Express lanes are only x8 in SLI? According to the review of the ASRock board here that board is supposed to be running x16 in both lanes in SLI mode. Is it just that there are no PCIe cards out there yet that are maxing out PCIe x8 bandwidth?
Anyway as long as my gaming isn't going to be held back by x8 PCIe (and it sure loks that way now) I think this EPoX board is a winner... thanks AnandTech for the great benchies!
-Adam in Philly
Araemo - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
How long do you run prime95/superpi on an overclock to verify stability?I ask because I've just RMAd a board and CPU that could not run prime95 for more than about 5 hours at stock speeds, but it does run for about 5-6 hours before it shows an error. The replacement board and CPU have not arrived yet, so I haven't been able to check on a similar system yet.
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
We typically run the following or a combination thereof for both stock and overclocked conditions. We might utilize additional components or various combinations not listed in our test system and use such applications as Office2003, Nero, or Photoshop depending upon the situation.
A. Prime95- Priority 1 - 30 minutes (if it passes go to step B, if not, tune until it can pass, this includes memory/voltage/fsb settings)
B. Prime95- Priority 10 - 4~12 hours (depends on the board and target market)
1. SuperPI - 3 iterations with settings at 32m generally, sometimes less.
2. 3DMark01 - Demo Loop 2 hours
3. 3DMark05 - Demo Loop 2 hours
4. Prime95/3DMark05 - Prime set at priority 1 - 3DM05 Loop - 4 hours
5. WorldBench 5 - 3 iterations (optional, depends on board, target market, or new chipset)
6. Standard test suite - 3 iterations of each application.
7. Game Testing - 4~8 hours of actual gameplay, AOE III, BF2, GTR/Legends, Guild Wars or others depending upon the software image.
8. MemTest86 - 2~6 hours (depends on board, target market, or new chipset)
Please realize that a combination of components, drivers, bios settings, and software loads can all account for failures that are outside of the true capability of the board. Our test systems generally use premium components that assist in the ability of the board to pass these tests along with constant climate control settings. The amount of hours required to debug a system is sometimes staggering. Of course we cannot test every combination of components or software available so at times a certain combination that fails for a user is not seen by us. I hope this answers your question.
Araemo - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Thats slightly better than I expected, but I have one last question: During the extended prime95 test, are other things done on it in the meantime(the 3dmark runs or gaming or some such?).In personal use I like to see at least 24 hours of prime95, but I FULLY understand that that would be even more time consuming for you guys, since you have to verify stability at multiple settings per board per review... 12 hours is welcome to me.
Araemo - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Nevermind, I saw you answered my own question in #4(thats what i get for skimming the list)kb3edk - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
I like to run prime95 or other burn-in programs (like Sandra, etc) overnight just to be on the safe side, but in my experience if I am pushing an OC too hard I have always had burn-in fail within half an hour. Of course from reading countless other postings on OC message boards, YMMV :)To keep things topical here, my ASRock M1695 boards can bump an A64 Winnie 3000+ from 1.8 to 2.25 GHZ (250 HTT), and an A64 X2 Manchester 3800+ from 2 GHz to 2.4 GHz (240 HTT). After that the boards just run out of volts. If I try to push the HTT any higher the system doesn't even boot.
Did you make sure to check your RAM before RMAing that mobo and CPU? Sometimes if you have a bad register somewhere, a burn-in program will take a little time to reach it and conk out. Especially something like superpi which has such a low memory footprint. You might wanna run Memtest86 on your box as soon as you get a chance, if you haven't already.
Araemo - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
My RAM passed memtest86+ on both this motherboard, and my old NF7-S(Once I found out one ram slot on that board was bad and moved the second stick to the other slot, I left it running memtest86 all day and it never errored. But I wanted dual channel memory again, so I ordered the ASRock 939DualSata2 and a 3200+, and memtest86 passes, but prime95 dies eventually.)Technically, registers are in the CPU, and I think ram uses a different terminology, but I know what you meant. As far as I can tell, my RAM is fine, and I don't believe it is a windows problem(I've only had one crash in the week I've had the board: Winamp crashed on me randomly last night.. UT2k4 and NS/TS(Half-life mods) run fine)
My PSU should be plenty for this board(According to people in the ASRock thread in the forums, my PSU is higher end than others who have this system running well, and voltages are stable according to the mobo)... Sooo... I have no way of knowing if it was the board or the CPU, since I don't have any other S939 boards around. I'm just glad newegg let me return it with no hassle. (And I was smart enough to order the opteron 146 this time around instead of the 3200+.. but I never even got around to touching the overclocking on the 3200+. I don't start overclocking until I know prime95 is stable at stock settings)
On my mobile barton I experienced similar symptoms of a too-high overclock: Prime95 would error out relatively quickly, sound would start screwing up(I went the quick way, I'd load prime95, and the 3dmark03 demo.. nice heavy stress and audio(and sometimes video) would start going weird well before a hard lock.) And that CPU and ram still handle memtest86 and prime95 fine.
Araemo - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
I'm also curious how you know a system is 'super pi' stable?As far as I can tell, it's more a speed test than a stability test in the sense that prime95 is..
Super Pi seems to be calculating a fresh value for pi, but not comparing it to the known value? Is there an easy way to compare its output to the known value?
Palek - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Gary,There is a spelling error in the last sentence of the 1st page:
"Let's find out how Epox's offering fairs against the competition."
The correct spelling is "fares" not "fairs".
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
I had corrected it on the final draft and somehow it still made it in. My fault for not catching it once the article went live last night. It is corrected now as are the ascending chart figures.Googer - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Is epox part of Shuttle?http://local.google.com/local?q=Epox%20EP-9U1697-G...">http://local.google.com/local?q=Epox%20...utf-8&am...
Googer - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
The ULi M1695 is all about upgradeability and the ASrock implementation uses a 20pin PSU where as the Epox implementation needs a 24pin connection. Based on the benchmarks it also looks like you will need to purchase a PCI-e x1 gigabit controller.Speaking from experience, my biggest gripe on the ASrock M1695 is the BIOS is very quirky and can be very very slow to POST.
Epox is the king if you are an overclocker and overall performance is very impressive compaired to the ASrock ULi M1695.
Avalon - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
8Mb throughput? Are you sure that's not a mistake?The only comment on Epox's ethernet score was that it was not competitive...700Mb vs 8Mb...I'd say something is wrong, or a typo?
Palek - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Yeah, I noticed that, too, then I found the missing "9" outside the graph area. The figure is correct, it's just the layout that is messed up.Gary Key - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
The actual number is 98.9Mb/s. Our graph engine has a small issue with variances that wide. It placed the 9 into the description field. I updated the text statement to reflect this issue. Thank you.Peter - Friday, March 17, 2006 - link
While you're updating, you might want to correct the research error that the RTL8201 is a "PCI based solution". It is not, it's just a PHY to the ULi chip's integrated 10/100 MAC.Oh, and when are you finally going to stop attributing memory performance to chipsets on AMD64?
Cygni - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Might have to pick one of these up...Rock Hydra - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
The Epox EP-9U1697 GLi displayed superb stability with 4 DDR2 modules in Dual-Channel operation at the settings of 2-2-2-7, but it required the command rate to be increased to 2T.Spoelie - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Another very small quirk: page 7 3rd graph shows latency - lower is better - but the boards are still ordered like higher is better..Spoelie - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
hmm and apparantly all the audio utilization graphs as well :) And since we're still at it, since for storage performance differs only from southbridge to southbridge and not from board to board, it might ease up those graphs to just display one representative for each + the board in review.Rock Hydra - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Er sorry, forgot to mention you said DDR2.Googer - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Here is another just released review on this same motherboard:http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnew...">http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnew...,
Gary Key - Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - link
Sorry about that, corrected. :)