Iwill Xp333 Opinions

[Zemuss]

Hey I need input on this board. from the review it seems to be a pretty good board.

Laters.
Z

[muckshifter]

Don't wast your money ...

Can you find TRUE DDR333 memory or will you just hope that your PC2100/2400 like Crucial or Corsairs will overclock and remain stable?

Do you have any ATA133 HD to put on the Raid controler?

Now the dividers are another issue.

[lurch63]

i know man this board looks pretty darn cool , i'm thinking either that or the kr7(wait for the a)-raid , but it seems really cool andi'm looking foward to it, i like the 1/5 2/5 multiplier , sounds awesome, but i can't say as for which one would problably be better, i think others opinions would hold more stock, when it comes to which chipsets they are ussing and stuff, but i think it rocks.

lurch

[AmStoned]

Man do you need it in a hurry? 'Cus you know companies are starting to ship the KT333 board and in about 2 months you'll have the KT333A w/ official PC2700. Save your money 'til then.

[Zemuss]

Hey Muck.. Which board should I get then? What do you recommend..????

I am looking for a good SOLID board that will suit me well.
I need to get away from the darkside!

"Z"

[prod]

I personally dont have much faith in Ali chipsets. If the performance only beats the KT266A when overclocked to the max, why not get the via and overclock?

[muckshifter]

Prod is on the right line ... to many of us get burnt fingers buying the "latest" motherboard, only to find in two week from purchase the dam thing has been upgraded. Abit kt7 - kt7a, I got caught with that one.

Zimmer ... MSI is my first choice followed by QDI and then Abit all DDR's ... take your pick ... there are others.

I did an upgrade for a customer who bought his own MB, it was an ECS Mainboard 266/133 (takes either) was very surprised indeed AND an inexpensive price ...

hehe ... and the system I just got off Flops uses the same board, very underrated board, must see if I can find a supplier. :D

[JohnnyBra]

I agree.. I got the K7T-A Raid the day after they came out.. What does that mean? It's a Rev 1.0 board.... no support for XP processors..........

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Having the latest and greatest isn't always the best thing.. Let it be out for a month or 2 before you jump on it. Unless you have a lot of money and nothing to do with it

[ImaginAsian]

One thing I would like to know is if the new DDR333 boards will officially support 166FSB speeds. We all know AMD is not announcing anything from the Chip end so are the boards really just going to be nothing more then able to run DDR333 memory??

What I am getting at is will the PCI/AGP divisor be settable so it is within Spec. That's the attraction of the IWILL XP333 with their 1/5 and 1/6 PCI divisior. Yet to see any manufacturer announce anything similar.

The other cool thing about the IWILL is the 10% Vcore BIOS option to allow users to go past 1.85V without any mods.

[Rando]

Like the fellas said, wait a few months, the manufacturers will be throwing out boards with the features and the performance your looking for, with plenty of true DDR 333, and support for XP's temp diode.

Good point IA, hopefully VIA will implement the divisor in their new chipset, and they just now have implemented ATA 133 in the new southbridge. I know, the instability of VIA is worth noting, but so is their consistent performance.:D

[muckshifter]

Basically, Iwill has implemented PCI and AGP dividers that will allow the board to run at a 166Mhz (333DDR) front side bus and still have the PCI and AGP in spec.

The only two problems with this is that first, AMD has no processors that officially support this (meaning you'll need to overclock them), and the RAM that is currently out isn't quite ready to hit 333Mhz very reliably.

Sorry IAbut the Vcore stops at 1.85V. Iwill pretty much promised higher then that, and it would definitely be nice to have. There is no VIO option in the BIOS either, but you can adjust the VIO using jumpers on the board. Not great, but at least it is there.

http://accelenation.com/?doc=101&page=1

[ImaginAsian]

The review is before the new BIOS and new board revision was shipped. If you traverse the AMDMB IWILL forums you will come across threads which show the new BIOS to include this option for 10% more Vio. I'll try to locate one for ya tonight!

[muckshifter]

No need IA, I bow to your superior knowledge on these things ... I was merely pointing out that ... although this is a good board there are some blinding restrictions ... NO AMD chip. ;)

:D

[ImaginAsian]

Superior Knowledge???? Just regurgitating what I read in their forums...that's all :)

Here's where I first read up on the new rev2.1...check the posts by SilverSaver.

http://www.amdmb.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=83708

I was almost set on going with the XP333 about a month back but figured I was in no rush to get another mobo and PC2700 wasn't really being offered yet.

[prod]

Muck: you put QDI ahead of Abit? Hmm...
Guys, I say we tie him up in the backyard and pelt him with our old 512k ISA video cards till he takes that back :lol:

Are you talking about the ECS K7S5A? I have heard a lot of good stuff about that one. Very handy if you have a bunch of sdram to use, but dont want an outdated board without DDR.
Funny, I used to avoid everything from SiS like the plague, but it seems they done something good this time with their motherboard chipsets.

[muckshifter]

QDI are my mainstay motherboards, I have been using them for 3 years now and I checked my "returns sheet" ... 4 MB's returned in 3 years is pretty dam good.
http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/eng/products/k7e.htm

For an XP system my main choice is MSI, but again the QDI KuDoZ 7 does very nicely.
http://www.qdigrp.com/qdisite/eng/Products/Kudoz7v2.htm


As for ECS ... I, like you, would not have entertained SIS if I had a choice ... BUT ... it does seem that they have a winner for the likes of us system builders.

The K7S5A would suit me down to the ground and allow me to build different machines using an inexpensive, reliable board. All I need is to find a good supplier here in the UK.

They would allow a "customer" an easy upgrade path on a Duron 900 to an XP ... :D

[prod]

I guess I could look at QDI again, its been about 5 years. LOL
Had some issues with Pentium 1 boards come in with no cache chips, although they were on the silkscreen. And incorrect cpu range, said up to 200, but would not boot past 133. I just got the opinion back then that they had very sloppy production and design.

[leonardo]

I should be putting my Iwill XP-333 RAID together this weekend. I know it's not head to head with the Abit KR7, but it's pretty close. As I'm building essentially a new system, the price point of the Iwill was very attractive. I will be overclocking, so I'm not too concerned about it's 5-10% performance lag behind the best of Abit. Yes, the Rev. 2.1 does have the 10% CPU overvoltage feature! I'm poor at micro-soldering. Most of the reviews I've seen are really praising the board's stability, even at extreme FSB overclocks. Yes, those FSB overclocks are coming in at very high numbers.

OK, to sum it all that up: I got the board because I wanted an upper-crust overclocker with good stability, for less than a premium price. (Already did the premium price thing with the Abit KT7-R and KT7A-R.)

[AmStoned]

Here's a new review of version 2.1 by Overclocker.com

http://www.overclockers.com/articles497/index02.asp

[ImaginAsian]

Sweet results, Joops. Yeah that IWILL is making serious noise with high FSB speeds. Just a shame ALi's memory controller is holding back its performance. If the memory controller was anywhere near Via's level, everyone...and I mean everyone would be buying the XP333 board.


Re FOC and LOC...yep I heard the bad news about FOC. Well...this is my permanent home now. Stop by more often...old friends miss ya :)

[leonardo]

Board is installed now on new system. Only 1600MHz @ 266DDR (AMD XP1900+). Overclocking will come later once I sort out some software issues. Hey, who can direct me to some Iwill XP333-R tweaking and overclocking guides? I could use some help on this. The manual isn't exactly helpful - very generic, not to mention the outright goofs!

[Rando]

Have a look here (http://www.x-faqtor.com/xp333.htm) and follow the links....:)

[leonardo]

Great link. I had been there before but had lost the bookmark due to a ...... long sad story.

I think I'm going to have some serious fun overclocking this system.

[M.i.S. Nemesis]

Zemuss, I have a 386 Mobo for your troubles. See me tomorrow @ work!!

J/k - Go for the ABIT NF7-S like 026T

[zoom314]

I have the r2.1 now and I'm going at 1.95Ghz, I finally received the Teac 1.44Mb fdd and I'm going to flash to the 12/20/2002 Bios, I had a dead fdd. This Iwill XP333 r2.1 Mother Board Rocks!