Features

The EP-9U1697 features four SATA II connections capable of running RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. The SATA II controller supports NCQ (Native Command Queuing) and hot-swapping.

Top : Legacy IDE ports    Left : SATA II ports

Even though it has SATA connectivity, legacy ATA-133 devices are not forgotten. There are two ATA-133 connectors on this motherboard for your old hard drives and optical drives.

As for expansion slots, this motherboard features two PCI Express slots, both with GLI support. You'd probably have guessed that GLI is actually the same as NVIDIA's SLI and in fact, it does support two NVIDIA cards running SLI mode.

Unlike many other motherboards, the EP-9U1697 has only one PCI Express slot. It has three PCI slots.

Expansion Slots	GhostBIOS

The most interesting feature of this motherboard is the GhostBIOS feature which allows users to flash the BIOS without having the system POST. We will give this feature a try later and see if it really works.

Like most EPoX motherboards, the EP-9U1697 includes a diagnostic LED display. The diagnostic LED display can significantly help speed up the diagnostic process.

Also, the diagnostic LEDs can be configured to show the temperature of the CPU after the system successfully POSTs (this can be enabled/disabled via the BIOS.) In addition, EPoX included two power/reset switches, which makes shorting the motherboard power switch pins unnecessary. Good stuff.

Diagnostic LED & EZ Switch	Realtek ALC 655 AC'97

As for integrated audio, the EP-9U1697 utilizes the Realtek ALC 655 AC'97 audio chip instead of the Azalia High Definition audio used in the reference ULi M1697.

This is not surprising as EPoX has to keep the cost of the motherboard down. If you really need anything better than AC'97, you won't need to worry as there are plenty of PCI slots to spare.