ULI's First SLI Chipset?
PC Perspective has just posted a review of the EPOX EP-9U1697 GLI motherboard based on the ULI M1697 chipset. Despite being a very low cost board, the ULI chipset can utilize a patch which "unlocks" SLI functionality. Although not officially supported, the benchmark results seem to indicate that everything is working properly making this EPOX board an absolute bargain.
After loading the updated BIOS provided by EPoX, my experience with the EP-9U1697 was very smooth. Where it counts, the EP-9U1697 is very impressive - the board performed on equal footing against the competing nForce 4 SLI motherboard in every benchmark. Even more impressive are the SLI gains - while single video card performance was slower than the nForce 4, in SLI the EP-9U1697 GLI matched the nForce 4 and even beat it slightly in Quake 4.
