2CPU.com » News » September 2001 » Iwill DVD266u-RN Review... Incoming!

I received an email from my main man Sherman over at Iwill. He mentioned that my DVD266u-RN is in the mail and enroute to Canada as I type. This is great news for all of you who've been salivating over this board since the first leaked photo was posted months ago.

A better layout, onboard LAN, and Tualatin support should make for an interesting solution. Cory will be putting this board through its paces.

The official PR should be on Friday of next week. :-)

07/03/2001 05:27 PM: Iwill DVD266u-R by nitro_fish
VIAHardware has a pic of the Iwill DVD266u-R motherboard that is sporting the VIA Pro266T chipset supporting Tualatin processors. From now on, we're going to try and highlight a new motherboard every ...

05/31/2001 01:44 AM: Iwill DVD266-R Reviews A' Plenty! by Jim
Ever since I reviewed the DVD266-R from Iwill, I've been reading other reviews of the board. I like seeing how other people feel about a product that I have an intimate knowledge of... Well the review...

04/30/2001 03:21 AM: Club Overclocker does the Iwill DVD266-R... by Jim
The DVD266-R reviews just keep on comin'. This time it's Club Overclocker putting it through its paces. Let us see what they have to say. Think of the DVD266 as a twin engine dragster. Having two engi...

04/16/2001 02:51 PM: Full On 3D Reviews the Iwill DVD266-R! by Jim
Kevin over at Full On 3D has thrown up his evaluation of Iwill's DVD266-R. There's a lot of interest in this board so I'll try not to hold you here with time consuming dramatics. The Iwill DVD266 is b...

04/11/2001 04:30 PM: Iwill DVD266 Review @ VIAhardware by nitro_fish
Those lucky guys over at VIAhardware got to play with an Iwill DVD266 motherboard and have posted their review of the board. The IWill DVD266-R is the first dual processor VIA Apollo Pro 266 mother...

04/09/2001 11:54 PM: Iwill DVD266-R Officially Launched! by Jim
I'm a day or two behind on this announcement. Sherman over at Iwill emailed it to my work account, which I don't access on the weekend's (doh). Well it's here, the first (of probably many) DDR-based d...

03/27/2001 03:06 PM: Iwill DVD266-R Preview by duke
For all of you craving a little DDR dual action, AnandTech takes a look at the Iwill DVD266-R motherboard. Recently, however, we have received an even more interesting contender from Iwill, the DVD266...

02/01/2001 12:50 AM: xbit-labs does the Iwill DVD266-R thang... by Hooz
I missed this one due to the move yesterday, so I figured I owe you guys (and gals) some linkage. If a DDR/IDE RAID sportin' duallie floats your boat, you might want to give this link a whirl. Here'...

01/29/2001 09:56 PM: Iwill DVD266-R Review by uberCory
Yes, FullOn3D has reviewed Iwill's new Apollo Pro 266 board with onboard AMI IDE RAID. It's a pre-production board, so take that as you will. There's some pretty nice Sandra scores there, though not...

01/21/2001 08:31 PM: Iwill DVD266R Review by nitro_fish
Thanks goes out to Mathias for the heads up on this one. OCworkbench has got their review of the Iwill DVD266R Apollo Pro 266 up go check it out. After reviewing so many VIA KT133A based boards, it...

Proxybeast No one can be told... Posts: 512 Joined: 2001-08-23

#11460 Posted on: 09/08/2001 05:22 AM Tight, I cant wait . Hope it can live up 2 the hype. [url=http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15540]***Found! ACR Network Card***[/url]

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11461 Posted on: 09/08/2001 07:26 AM Yay new hardware to play with. Let's hope it doesn't suck like the G550 is busily doing right now. ... Did I say that out loud? Oops. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

seitgeist Mac (Pro) Convert Posts: 92 Joined: 2001-08-03

#11462 Posted on: 09/08/2001 12:58 PM SWEET! I am really looking forward to the review. I am planning on buying this board if all . I came really close to buying the current model but decided to hold out for this one. Ok, I will go back and look at the pictures a little more. "The difference between a liberal and a conservative is this; a liberal believes in entitlement while a conservative believes in opportunity. A moderate believes they are entitled to opportunity!" Mac Pro - 2x 2.8Ghz Xeons 6GB RAM 8800GT 512MB 2x WD 320GB // H8DCE 2x Opteron 275 8 GB RAM 2x 8800GT 2x WD 500GB // K8WE 2x Opteron 246HE 4GB RAM 7900GT 2x 36GB Raptor

seitgeist Mac (Pro) Convert Posts: 92 Joined: 2001-08-03

#11463 Posted on: 09/08/2001 01:00 PM Oh, BTW, will the sound on this board be comparable to a SBLive 5.1? Just curious....need to know if I will be retiring that card or not. Ok, back to those pics of the board...... "The difference between a liberal and a conservative is this; a liberal believes in entitlement while a conservative believes in opportunity. A moderate believes they are entitled to opportunity!" Mac Pro - 2x 2.8Ghz Xeons 6GB RAM 8800GT 512MB 2x WD 320GB // H8DCE 2x Opteron 275 8 GB RAM 2x 8800GT 2x WD 500GB // K8WE 2x Opteron 246HE 4GB RAM 7900GT 2x 36GB Raptor

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11464 Posted on: 09/08/2001 10:29 PM Last I heard, the onboard sound was supposed to be comparable to a 5.1, yes. Of course, it's not too hard to be better than an SBLive in the first place, but let's not get into that again... [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

seitgeist Mac (Pro) Convert Posts: 92 Joined: 2001-08-03

#11465 Posted on: 09/09/2001 02:55 AM Heh, thanks! "The difference between a liberal and a conservative is this; a liberal believes in entitlement while a conservative believes in opportunity. A moderate believes they are entitled to opportunity!" Mac Pro - 2x 2.8Ghz Xeons 6GB RAM 8800GT 512MB 2x WD 320GB // H8DCE 2x Opteron 275 8 GB RAM 2x 8800GT 2x WD 500GB // K8WE 2x Opteron 246HE 4GB RAM 7900GT 2x 36GB Raptor

Sharkey Registered User Posts: 11 Joined: 2001-09-08

#11466 Posted on: 09/09/2001 11:07 AM If you can, find out what that square white 4-pin socket is for in the middle of the board next to the AGP slot. If its presence means that the advanced P4 power supplies are necessary to run this board, people will certainly be interested. Funny that it wasn't present on the previous DVD-266 incarnation.

widefault Registered User Posts: 1201 Joined: 2001-02-06

#11467 Posted on: 09/09/2001 08:16 PM Originally posted by Sharkey If you can, find out what that square white 4-pin socket is for in the middle of the board next to the AGP slot. If its presence means that the advanced P4 power supplies are necessary to run this board, people will certainly be interested. Funny that it wasn't present on the previous DVD-266 incarnation. It's power for the AGP Pro slot. You don't need it unless you have an AGP Pro video card. Still, I'll be hooking up my extra P4 power supply cable to it, lord knows what my next video card will be. &E

Sharkey Registered User Posts: 11 Joined: 2001-09-08

#11468 Posted on: 09/10/2001 03:26 AM Originally posted by widefault It's power for the AGP Pro slot. You don't need it unless you have an AGP Pro video card. Still, I'll be hooking up my extra P4 power supply cable to it, lord knows what my next video card will be. I sorta thought it was something like that, but I just wanted to be sure. I thought it was odd that the power hungry Tiger MP doesn't have it while the DVD board does.

Gareth Registered User Posts: 14 Joined: 2001-09-05

#11469 Posted on: 09/13/2001 09:30 PM Any confirmed dates for this review yet? ie. have you got it yet and if so what do you think :-)

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11470 Posted on: 09/13/2001 09:55 PM Apparently the boards that have been sent out to all the review sites are pre-production units. As such, we'll probably just do a preview for now, and wait for the finished product to do a full review. I believe the FedEx man has the board and tried to deliver it to Jim yesterday, but as there's no depot in town we'll have to cross our fingers and hope they show up there when he's home for lunch in the next few days. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

Gareth Registered User Posts: 14 Joined: 2001-09-05

#11471 Posted on: 09/13/2001 10:07 PM Ah. OK thanks for the info. I'll stop trying to get hold of one for a while then.....

widefault Registered User Posts: 1201 Joined: 2001-02-06

#11472 Posted on: 09/13/2001 10:33 PM I'm getting really tired of waiting, wonder what bus speeds the Tyan and Supermicro boards have? &E

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11473 Posted on: 09/13/2001 10:37 PM I wouldn't expect overclocking features on Tyan or Supermicro boards. Likely "official" bus speeds only, and no vcore as usual. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

widefault Registered User Posts: 1201 Joined: 2001-02-06

#11474 Posted on: 09/13/2001 10:59 PM Vcore's not a problem, a simple wire wrap will get them to 1.65 volts. I DO know the last single CPU Supermicro board I played with had bus speeds to 155, just had to use SoftFSB to get to any of them. I forget what my Tiger230 has for a clock pll, need to take a look again. Got a pair of chips and not a single worthwhile board yet. Getting REAL tempted to just dump them or build two single CPU boxes instead. &E

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11475 Posted on: 09/13/2001 11:08 PM Uniprocessor rigs? That would be a shame :/ Hopefully I'll have that DVD266u in the next day or two and can let you know if it's worth waiting for. Rumour has it the final boards should be following within a month, though I can't even remember where I heard that, so take with a grain of salt. Failing that, it's hard to go wrong with a D6VAA. I know that's no help if you've got your heart set on a DDR board, but if not, it's really hard to go wrong with a D6VAA and a buttload of good PC133, which anyone can afford these days. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

widefault Registered User Posts: 1201 Joined: 2001-02-06

#11476 Posted on: 09/13/2001 11:20 PM The D6VAA would be an option(already have two of them), but it doesn't support the two 1.13Ghz, 512k cache chips and the 512mb of DDR I already have. On a slightly related note, my single CPU 256k cache Tualatins@1.4 and 1.5Ghz just about match the performance of my dual 1Ghz D6VAA systems on quite a bit(mpeg-avi conversions, Genome@Home). Damn fine chips, and that's on an i815 board. &E

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11477 Posted on: 09/14/2001 03:56 AM Jim just dropped the DVD266u-RN off a couple hours ago. It's a nice looking board. It also doesn't at all like a pre-production unit. The hardware looks finished, and other than the lack of a manual (probably on the CD as a PDF anyway) the packaging was exactly what you'd expect from the retail unit. Win2k's part way through the install now, I'll update you guys again in a few hours when I've had some time to run a few benches and maybe seen how high it can take my 700E's. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

Sharkey Registered User Posts: 11 Joined: 2001-09-08

#11478 Posted on: 09/14/2001 06:17 AM Originally posted by Cory The hardware looks finished, and other than the lack of a manual (probably on the CD as a PDF anyway) the packaging was exactly what you'd expect from the retail unit. Does the unit come with a pair of Taisol HSFs like its predicessor?

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3574 Joined: 2000-03-15

#11479 Posted on: 09/14/2001 07:11 AM Nope. The main reason Iwill decided to package the Taisols with the DVD266 was due to the lack of space around the sockets, and the orientation of the ATX power connector. With the revised layout of the DVD266u-RN, there is PLENTY of room around the sockets now and the ATX power connector is at the top of the board. As such, no free sinks this time around. You can pretty much throw anything on there, though. [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11480 Posted on: 09/14/2001 07:25 AM Not mine, no. Maybe they found that adding to the cost too much. Or maybe my unit is pre-production. I think Jim has a question into Sherman about that. Edit: Looks like Jim is faster on the keyboard than I. I wonder how he does that with only one hand? [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3574 Joined: 2000-03-15

#11481 Posted on: 09/14/2001 08:03 AM Originally posted by Cory Edit: Looks like Jim is faster on the keyboard than I. I wonder how he does that with only one hand? Your sister chips in with the other hand. *cough* Sorry. Couldn't help myself. (neither could she!) [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

Cory <font color="#E22000">Do you like my hat? It's made of MONEY!</font> Posts: 413 Joined: 2000-05-19

#11482 Posted on: 09/14/2001 08:07 AM Your sister chips in with the other hand. *cough* A hand? Is that all you get? Your mom is much more generous... [url="http://www.2cpu.com"]www.2cpu.com[/url] [url="http://www.cory-grimster.org/boxen.html"]Boxen[/url]

Jim_ Administrator Posts: 3574 Joined: 2000-03-15

#11483 Posted on: 09/14/2001 08:17 AM Originally posted by Cory A hand? Is that all you get? Your mom is much more generous... Heh, you know Mom jokes don't work on me. :-) [url="http://www.2cpu.com"][size=1]2CPU.com[/url] - Because two are always better than one! [url="http://www.jimkirk.org"]jimkirk.org[/url] - Not a Myth any Longer. Just a Dad.[/size]

Sharkey Registered User Posts: 11 Joined: 2001-09-08

#11484 Posted on: 09/14/2001 10:49 AM Originally posted by Cory Not mine, no. Maybe they found that adding to the cost too much. The DVD266 was a bargain with the Taisols (once you've taken everything into account), so a DVD266u-RN without them at a cheaper total price would be fantastic. Even at the same price, the bonus of the new 6.1 channel sound makes the board a winner even before the reviews are written. I am curious if there will be an improvement in RAID performance, however.

2CPU.com » News » September 2001 » Iwill DVD266u-RN Review... Incoming!