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Iwill
has been designing and assembling motherboards for over 13
years but only recently broke into the high end enthusiast
motherboard scene. We haven't had the occasion to
review many boards from this Taiwanese OEM but they have
been configuring boards as of late, with all the "creature
comforts". Best of breed motherboards these days come
with a multitude of features beyond jumperless CPU
configuration, including things like on board RAID
controllers, 10/100 Ethernet and Surround Sound. This
motherboard however, went one step further.
Intel's
recent release of
the i850E chipset brought a 533MHz Front Side Bus to the
Pentium 4. This was a nice shot in the arm for overall
system bandwidth but it still leaves the memory bus at
400MHz or PC800 (DDR) for the RDRAM. Intel chose not
to validate PC1066 memory with the i850E as of yet, although
word is that this will be happening "soon".
Overclockers that are hell bent on performance have been
taking standard PC800 modules on the i850E or i850, to
PC1066 levels with ease however. It seems odd that
Intel wouldn't go the "full monty" with PC1066 for the
i850E, especially since modules are now readily available.
So, what's to stop motherboard manufacturers like Iwill from
validating PC1066 with the i850E?
That's
exactly what Iwill did with the P4R533-N. The Iwill
P4R533-N "officially" supports PC1066, at least form Iwill's
perspective, with validated modules, even though the i850E
doesn't "officially" support it. Let's have a look.
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Specifications of the
Iwill
P4R533-N |
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An i850E board
validated with PC1066 |
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Supports single 478-pin Intel Pentium 4 processor
1.5 GHz to 2.53 GHz and higher
Supports 400 MHz and 533 MHz system bus
CPU
Frequency / Voltage Select
Supports Vcore selection by BIOS
Supports CPU multiplier selection by BIOS (from 8X
to 50X in 0.5 increments
Supports CPU external frequency selection by BIOS
(up to 156 MHz)
Chipset
Intel® 850E chipset
ICH2
System Memory
Supports PC800 and PC1066 DRDRAM
Supports ECC memory (single bit error correction,
multiple bit error detection
Supports 128MB/256MB/512MB modules
Supports up to 2GB using four (4) 512MB modules
Validated PC1066 DRDRAM parts/modules
SAMSUNG:
MR16R0828BN1--CN9 1066--32
KINGSTON:
KVR1066X16-4/128 - 128MB 1066MHz 4-Device RIMM
KVR1066X16-8/256 - 256MB 1066Mhz 8-Device RIMM
KVR1066X18-4/128 - 128MB 1066MHz ECC 4-Device RIMM
KVR1066X18-8/256 - 256MB 1066MHz ECC 8-Device RIMM
Graphics
Supports AGP 4X (1.5V only)
On Board IDE
Supports two independent ATA channels
Supports ATA66/ATA100 and PIO modes
Audio
Support 6 channel speakers (5.1 configuration)
32-voice HRTF-base 3D positional audio
Supports Microsoft DirectSound 3D and Aureal A3D
Supports EAX sound effects (Environment Audio
eXtension)
Supports Creative SB-Link protocol
Supports SPDIF via IWILL SuperAudio (optional)
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I/O
Interface
1 x Floppy disk connector
2 x IDE connectors
4 x RIMM sockets
2 x serial ports
1 x parallel port
2 PS/2 connectors (mouse & keyboard)
1 x Game/MIDI connector
1 x CD-IN, audio-in connector
1 x auxiliary audio-in connector
2 x USB ports
1 x IR connector
1 x WOL header
1 x Smart Card reader connector
1 x Memory Stick® reader connector
1 x CPU temperature sensor
1 x system temperature sensor
1 x CPU fan header with PWM control
3 x system fan headers with fan control
Expansion Slots
1 x AGP slot supports AGP 4X mode only (1.5V)
5 x PCI 2.2 bus master slots
LAN Support
Supports HomePNA interface
Supports 10/100 Base-T (IEEE 802.3u
auto-negotiation) Ethernet interface
Supports Full-Duplex Flow Control (IEEE 802.3x)
Supports remote power-up using Wake-on-LAN
technology (card only)
Suports Wake-up on Magic packet through PME#
Supports Wake-up on LinkChg through PME#
Supports Wake-up on Microsoft wake-up frame through
PME#
Supports Wake-up on "Interesting" packet through PME#
Supports WFM
Supports Alert-on-LAN
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The P4R533-N kit is packed
fairly well with additional components, not just the ribbon
cables. The board also includes a well written manual,
driver CD, drive cables, a custom back panel face plate and
C-RIMM modules for termination with RDRAM modules.
Missing from the kit are SPDIF and additional audio output
brackets that are not included, in the interest of saving
cost. However, the C-Media Audio chip that is on the
P4R533-N supports these features. We would have liked
the supporting hardware to go with it. For now, these
are parts that the end user will have to buy as an "option".
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PC1066
Kingston RDRAM |
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16 Bit Dual Channel
RDRAM At 1.066GHz |
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PC1066 RDRAM
technology is fairly straight forward and easy to
understand. No magic here really, just faster memory
and higher clock speeds. The "PC1066" nomenclature
refers to the actual speed of the RDRAM, in this case
1066MHz. Specifically, PC1066 RDRAM memory runs at
533MHz DDR. So in short, RDRAM is a DDR technology as
well, sort of. That is to say that the system performs
reads and writes on the rising and falling edge of the
clock, much like DDR but obviously at a lot higher clock
speed. PC1066 memory provides 4.2GB/sec of bandwidth,
the highest of any commercially available PC memory.
Test system
memory - Kingston PC1066 RDRAM
Kingston
provided us with
512MB of PC1066 RDRAM and it performed flawlessly at its
rated speed and even tolerated a fairly significant
overclock. We'll give you details on this, later in
the overclocking section. However, these Kingston
modules are one of the few that Iwill has listed on their
site as being validated with their board for full PC1066
performance. We were very pleased with the overall
performance of this memory.
Next, we'll get
back to the layout and install of the P4R533-N and fire it
up.
Layout,
Installation and BIOS
