ULi launched M1697 this morning

[bluetooth]

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/uli/m1697launch/g1.htm

[Bella]

So much for ULi1695. Does this mean no more AGP hype for ULI?

[Sylvester]

Such a shame and AGP taking 76% of the current market. I think the manufacturers should take the dovetailing of new technologies more seriously.

I suppose mobo upgrades are beyond the average user and not the majority of purchases. Judging from this, one mobo covers the whole CPU upgrade-with-legacy-AGP market.

I guess the manufacturers consider OEMs putting systems together from scratch as their priority. That said I would say an integrated graphics solution with AGP and PCIe might appeal to the OEMs who serve a larger number of users who can and have bought an AGP graphics card and fitted it for themselves and might like to migrate to entry level 64 bit but cant cope with a motherboard upgrade.

Alternatively OEMs could use a very cheap PCI card to provide the same effect ie a lower mid budget grephics capable standalone 64 bit system that can accept graphics cards of either format. I think that would be very appealing for some users.

[Bismarck]

Let's not be all too pessimistic. Who says ULi will stop producing M1695 and especially M1567 alltogether? Maybe it's even possible to couple up M1697 with M1567, still making it possible to have both AGP and PCI-e.

Also keep in mind that there must be some challenge to the NF4 SLI chipsets and I'd rather see ULi there than VIA, since they don't pose a real competition IMHO. So I guess it's more a broadening of the market from ULi than abandoning a part on behalve of another part.