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Introduction
The
KT133A chipset is still probably the most popular
chipset for Socket A processors right now. It
has now matured well and with its usage of normal
SDRAM, it made upgrading of people from older
SDRAM systems pretty easy. Those coming from a
440BX133 system can still make use of their old
memory and other peripherals when they switched
to the KT133A and AMD.
The
Iwill KK266
is probably the most preferred KT133A motherboard
primarily due to its overclockability. It is the
only KT133A board that has consistently been able
to achieve bus speeds of 160MHz and above with
full stability. Other motherboards would already
fail to post even at that bus speed but the KK266
is still able to run them without problems. Another
selling point of the KK266 is the availability
of the RAID version (KK266-R) which has an AMI
ATA100/RAID controller that supports RAID 0/1/0+1.
The other selling point of the KK266 is the usage
of an onboard hardware sound solution. Instead
of using VIA's AC97 codec, the KK266 uses a C-Media
4.1 channel onboard sound which overall provides
better quality of sound compared to the usual
AC97 onboard sound and this C-Media is a hardware
sound solution so it won't slow your system down
as much as the onboard sound of VIA.
The
KK266 already seemed to have everything that one
could ask for so what's the reason for making
the KK266plus? Well, the KK266plus is a newer
version of the KK266. The main difference of the
two motherboards is the usage of a better onboard
sound solution on the KK266plus. By default, the
KK266plus now uses a C-media CMI8378 MX Sound
Chip(with 6 channel and SPDIF). Onboard sound
now has been better than ever for the KK266plus.
It may not be an SB Live! but the mere fact that
Iwill included such a good sound chip in the board
says something about the makers themselves. For
those who aren't too particular with sound cards,
the C-Media sound chip will pretty much do the
job without spending so much for a sound card.
Quality is definitely good and a lot better than
the usual onboard sound. What else is different?
Not much anymore except for a very minor change
in placement of the power connector of the motherboard
and the color of the PCB. Some review sites have
been sent review samples of the KK266plus still
with the active cooler on the northbridge but
the evaluation sample sent to me was already a
retail model so it didn't have the active cooler
on the northbridge anymore.
Just
as the KK266 is a KT133A, the KK266plus is also
a KT133A so it has the same features basically.
Features
and Specifications
VIA
KT133A Chipset
VT82C686B SouthBridge
6 Bus Master PCI Slots
1 Legacy ISA Slot
1 Universal 4X AGP Slot
3 DIMM Sockets, 1.5GB Max
AMI ATA100/RAID IDE Controller (KK266plus-R only)
C-Media CMI8378 MX Sound Chip(with 6 channel and
SPDIF)
2 Mbit EEPROM with Flash Protection
"Bye-Bye Jumper"TM IWILL® Smart Setting
C-Media
CMI8378 MX Features
32-voice HRTF-base 3D positional audio
Supports Microsoft DirectSound 3D and Aureal A3D
Supports EAX sound effects (Environment Audio
eXtension)
Supports SPDIF (via IWILL SuperAudio ) (Optional)
More
on the motherboard |
