M1697 Chipset Details
As we already mentioned, the M1697 is a reincarnation of what we know as the "M1695+M1567", merged into a single piece of silicon and minus the AGP port. The result is a highly integrated Athlon 64 (or Sempron) core logic product.
Looking at the storage interfaces, the chipset features an ACHI-compliant Serial ATA controller with support for 300 MBit/s bandwidth and Native Command Queuing. ULi offers four ports and the option to run RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5 or a JBOD setup. In addition to that, there are still two UltraATA/133 channels for old-style hard drives and optical storage devices. A High Definition Audio controller is a must-have today as well, and has not been forgotten.
However, the high level of integration comes at a price - one that many people tend to perceive as a shortcoming of the product, though it should not be seen this way. If a chip designer refuses to follow the path of maximum integration, it will never be possible to accommodate everything into the resulting silicon. As a consequence, the M1697 has a total of eight rather than ten USB 2.0 ports, and it comes with only a 100 Mbit Ethernet controller. Gigabit Ethernet has to be added via companion chips using PCI Express, since this requires some additional silicon real estate.
