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The one true constant, when it
comes to the world of computers, is change. Even as new
items hit the market, or even during our evaluations early
on here at HotHardware, newer technological breakthroughs
are being developed to get
more and more performance from PC system components. Technology
silently progresses on whether or not the rest of the
world is ready for these new ideas. More often than not,
motherboards are the springboard for these new
technologies, sometimes incorporating them before the
supporting hardware is even released. One such technology
is Serial ATA (SATA), which will eventually replace the
parallel ATA drives that PCs have been using for over a
decade.
The IWILL P4ES is one of the first boards that comes with
SATA connectors on board, although it still comes with 2
ATA133 and 2 ATA100 ports as well. The main reason for
this obviously, is that we have not seen any serial ATA
hard drives available for sale yet. Unlike ATA133, SATA
will be officially recognized as a new standard for data
transfer, and has full support from Western Digital,
Maxtor, and Seagate. Serial ATA will be introduced to the
mainstream PC at an initial peak transfer rate of 150
MB/sec and a roadmap leading to up to 600 MB/sec
throughput in 2007. It is a very promising technology, with
hopes of breaking the data access bottleneck currently
experienced with today's hard drives.
Serial ATA is not the only feature of the IWILL P4ES.
Based on the established i845E chipset, the P4ES supports
both 400MHz and 533MHz front size buses for Pentium 4
CPUs. Other main features consist of 6-channel on-board
audio, support for USB 2.0, DDR 200/266, and ATA133, and
comes with an external connection box called the FI Panel,
short for the "Fantastic Interface" (god help the
marketing guy that thought of that one!) All jokes aside, it
does come in handy, providing front ports for USB devices,
headphones and microphone jacks, as well as support for
Compact Flash cards, Memory Sticks and Secure Digital
memory cards. So, who's going to show you all this
hardware? I guess
IWILL. I mean, I will...err... you know
what I mean. Let's check out the specifications.
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| Specifications / Features of
the Iwill P4ES |
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A Full Featured
i845E board just begging to be tested |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
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CPU
Chipset
Memory
IDE
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Dual channel ATA 100/66/33
IDE controller
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Dual channel ATA 133 IDE
controller
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Promise PDC20275
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Supports maximum of eight
IDE drives
Serial ATA
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Silicon Image Sil 3112
SATALink PCI Host Controller
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Support two independent
SATA devices
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Data transfer up to
1.5Gbps (150MB/s)
Audio
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6-Channel AC '97 CODEC
on-board
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Realtek ALC650 audio CODEC
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S/PDIF digital audio
output
System BIOS
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Award BIOS 4Mb Flash ROM
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Dual BIOS code - one code
read-only
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Supports ACPI S1, S3, and
S4
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Expansion Slots
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1 AGP slot supporting 4X
mode (1.5V)
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5 32-bit 33MHz PCI slots
Internal I/O Connectors
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2 ATA 100/66/33 IDE
connectors
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2 ATA 133 IDE connectors
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2 Serial ATA connectors
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1 Floppy drive connector
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1 Internal IR connector
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1 Internal USB 2.0 header
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1 Wake-on-LAN header
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1 Compact Flash reader
connector
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1 Memory Stick/Secure
Digital reader connector
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1 CD-IN connection
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1 AUX-IN connection
Back Panel I/O
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2 PS/2 connectors
(keyboard and mouse)
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1 9-pin Serial port
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1 25-pin SPP/ECP/EPP
Parallel port
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3 USB 2.0 ports
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Audio connectors
(Line-out, Line-in, Mic-in, Center Channel and Rear
Channel)
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S/PDIF connection
FI Panel (Fantastic Interface)
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2 USB 2.0 ports
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Audio connectors
(Headphones, Microphone)
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Compact Flash, Secure
Digital, and Memory Stick memory card reader slots
Miscellaneous | | The
BIOS, Layout and Quality
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