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Introduction
The
KT133A still seems to be the best performing chipset
for AMD thanks to the excellent price/performance
ratio. AMD Processors gain a lot from high fsbs
than a higher memory bandwidth. A DDR board running
PC2100 DDR-SDRAM but runs on a 200/100MHz fsb
would still seem slow. The C-Type Athlons really
got a big boost in performance thanks to the higher
front side bus speed. The KT133A also gave life
to fsb overclocking which was clearly embraced
by the market.
Iwill
KK266
The
Iwill KK266 now makes its way into the Planet
Savage labs. The motherboard's layout looks similar
to the Abit KT7A. The expansion configuration
is very much ok for hobbyists and normal users.
The 1/6/1/0 AGP/PCI/ISA/CNR expansion configuration
won't pose any problems for those people who have
many PCI devices or use an ISA expansion card.
Northbridge active cooling has pretty much been
evident in some KT133A boards but the KK266 only
uses a small "greenie" heatsink to cool
the northbridge. Keep in mind that the VT8363A
northbridge can get quite hot at high bus speeds
so active cooling really helps. Space around the
CPU socket was pretty fair. The small capacitors
seem to keep a good distance from the ZIF socket
but still could use more space. The location of
the socket may not be good for those who use only
a mid-tower ATX case since the cpu would seem
to be too close to the power supply and removing
the heatsink would require removing the PSU sometimes.
Just
like the the Epox 8KTA3 and MSI K7T Turbo, the
Iwill KK266 also has a RAID version. You can see
the traces for the additional IDE ports and the
RAID controller on the motherboard. The RAID version
is named KK266-R. Jumpers are present on the motherboard
to change some settings. There is a jumper to
enable/disable onboard sound, a jumper to set
the default fsb from 100 to 133 and a jumper to
adjust VIO voltage. Iwill also uses their one-of-a-kind
jumpers...they use extended jumpers which make
them much easier to remove or reposition. While
these jumpers are easy to use, it would still
be better if all cpu parameters could be set in
the bios.
Features
VIA
KT133A Chipset
Support for AMD Athlon and Duron
3 DIMM Slots, 1.5GB Max
1 Universal AGP4X Slot
6 Bus Master PCI Slots
1 Legacy ISA Slot
OnBoard C-Media CMI-8738 3D Hardware Sound 4.1
4 Fan Headers
OnBoard AMI ATA33/66/100/RAID Controller, Supports
RAID 1, 0, 0+1 (Optional)
The
one thing that makes the KK266 stand out from
the crowd is the usage of an onboard hardware
sound solution. While many still say that onboard
sound is crap, there's really no problem with
having it on the board since it can always be
disabled.
Bios
Out
of the box, the Iwill's bios is boring. Memory
tweaks are very much weak in the bios. Of course,
with the proper bios updates, the KK266's bios
really improved drastically and completed the
memory tweaks that users look for under Advanced
Chipset Features. What's good is that the settings
are visible to the user. Fastest would display
(5-2-2), Faster would display (6-2-2). Basically,
the bios has all the tweaks that are needed to
maximize the performance of the motherboard. Overclocking
is done under Iwill Smart Setting. FSB's are available
from 100-132 and 133-200 in 1MHz incriments. CPU
voltage adjustments are absolute and can be adjusted
in 0.025v incriments, just what overclockers need.
The maximum voltage supported is 1.85v. The VIO
voltage adjustment is done through jumpers which
give a +5% or +10% to the VIO. Apparently, the
voltages are only 3.3V, 3.4V and 3.45V which seems
pretty much lacking.
The
motherboard doesn't have active cooling on the
northbridge but how high does the motherboard
overclock?
Overclocking
and Test System |
