Post your comments and questions on the Iwill XP333-R motherboard review.

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

I wonder who didn't like the article?

I swear there's someone that comes along and votes "no" on everything I write just for the hell of it.

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Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

The only reason why i didn't like this review is because it did not compare the featured mobo with any other mobo in the benchmarks. It was only compared to itself with different clock speeds of the CPU. I don't doubt that it is a decent motherboard but i would like to see its performance against other motherboards from different chipsets.

Kevin Wagner

GOod point!

I have the IWill XP333-R (Ver 2.1) with
the latest BIOS (At least, it was the latest whenever I checked the web-site on Feb 2nd).

I *cannot* overclock worth a flip.
166MHz *does not work* even when I lower my multiplier to 9. Being as my CPU runs w/ a multiplier up to 12 w/ no problem (12x133MHz=~1600MHz, and 9x166MHz=~1500MHz) I know my CPU is not the limiting factor. My RAM also should not be the limiting factor since it is PC2700 (with active cooling to ensure it stays cool!). At 133MHz the board really uses 132.6, which is fine, I don't mind losing that. At 134MHz it is really 133.6, so that's ok too... I don't mind it being a little less than what it claims, but I can't even reach 150MHz.
I've not tried every step in between 134-150 because it really isn't worth it. I want to be able to run at 166MHz. I can't Even use the asynchronous setting of 133/166 (enabled in the new BIOS). What's up w/ that? Anyone else experiencing these problems? Any way to get around them?

Oh, BTW: I've read on OCWorkbench forums that using the jumper for FSB 100 means 100-132 and 133 means 133-233. Will, that isn't true because I can use 133 on both, but it doesn't matter because neither jumper allows me to push this board high...I can't even get it to POST at high/semi-high FSB speeds.

First, you are correct about the jumper. Leaving the jumper in it's default position allows me FSB adjustments from 100 all of the way up to 233, so the jumper is something I've always just ignored.

I would like for you to re-read what you posted and tell me if it makes sense, because it doesn't make sense to me. Not that your post didn't make sense in verbiage, but you're saying that because YOU can't overclock with YOUR CPU, that it means that the motherboard is not the limiting factor.

The reason why I think it doesn't make sense is because if the motherboard was the limiting factor and the CPU was easliy overclocked by moving the bus up and the multiplier down on any other motherboard thus proving that the CPU was a fine overclocking specimin, then your statement would mean that either your board is just defective becuase I have no problems overclocking on this same model board, or you are calling me a liar and that I made up all of my numbers.

Seriously, are you sure that the CPU is unlocked AT ALL? Because if it's not, you're not going to be able to run that CPU at any multiplier BUT 12! Taht's certainly not the board or the RAM's fault! I'm willing to guess that you can't run that CPU at ANY speed if you change the multiplier, and that would NOT be the fault of the RAM or the motherboard.

If the motherboard WAS the limiting factor, how is it that I have the 1333 that I used in the article to run at 166 X 9.5 and that I have a 1000 that will run at 140 X 10? I have a Duron that will not do anything more than 110 X 10, though. THAT CPU is a limiting factor in my mix of chips, where the other two are not. For you to say that it's because of the motherboard that you ca not overclock, is pretty much saying that I could not have overclocked using the exact same motherboard and that I must have made up all of my numbers! Certainly you are not saying that, are you?

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Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

It is an excellent point, but I was not reviewing any other motherboard. I was only reviewing this one. If I were having some sort of "motherboard shootout", then I would certainly be comparing different boards to each other.

On that note, Mike over at Anandtech did a shootout of several motherboards including the Iwill:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1578&p=23

Unfortuantely, he only did a head on comparison of the Iwill against the Abit KR7, but it still can give you a good idea where this board stands in a head on comparison with at least one popular motherboard.

Of course, a look at his performance analasys on the previous page shows all of the motherboards VERY CLOSE and the Iwill towards the middle end of those comparisons, but I don't think people should consider the Iwill as a mediocre speed board with some nice features like ATA133, RAID and 5.1 sound. I think people should consider the Iwill as a great overclocker with some nice features like ATA133, RAID and 5.1 sound.

Get my drift.

(Edited for carriage return placement)

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Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

I didn't take offense at all. I just wanted to look at what you were saying. You were saying that you couldn't overclock with this board and the CPU and RAM were NOT the limiting factor... What does that leave? Yep... The board.

It honestly doesn't make sense.

As far as "doing anything special". Nope. Popped in an unlocked 1333 and just cranked up the front side bus while I dropped down the multiplier. Nothing more.

Maybe you just got a dud board. If it's any consolation, my fan headers don't read RPMs.

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Hey. What kind of party is this? There's no booze and only one hooker. -- Bender (Futurama)

You can look at some recent comparative benchmarks on my review of the Dragon Plus here

http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?command=view&ID=1159

I don't think the Iwill is nearly as good as you guys do - even at 166MHz FSB it gets smoked at the default settings by a 50 dollar SIS board. The KT266A is in a different league, again beating a 166MHz Iwill at its default 133MHz settings. I appreciate the XP333 lets you hit very high FSB, but when there is so little benefit, what is the point? Its a good value budget solution, but since it features the ancient ALi MaGik chipset so it should be. Did you guys test the board with ATA133 disks? My XP333 wont allow them to run at anything above ATA100. My Iwill XP333 review can be found here:

http://www.ocprices.com/index.php?c...roupID=2&ID=963

The review was very well written jonny, well done but we will just have to agree to disagree about the boards down sides

Thanks!

Actually, I had the drive running with a Maxtor ATA133 drive that the board was detecting and running at ATA133.

I was half tempted to do some IDE benchmarks with SpinRite.

Wanna borrow the drive?

Thats exactly the same drives as I used. I guess the newer BIOS revision you used sorted that problem out.

I DISAGREE WITH THE SCORE THAT YOU GAVE THIS IWILL MOBO. I OWN ONE AND MY MACHINE CONSIST OF AN AMD XP 2000 (1.78GHZ), GEFORCE 4 TI4600 (310/730), 1.5GB PC2700 OCZ DDR NONECC, UNBUFFERED, 40GB MAXTOR 7200RPM HD. MY BENCH WITH THIS MOBO IS JUST 7216 USING 3DMARK 2001. MY BENCHMARK USING A SOYO DRAGON PLATINUM IS 12130 WITH THE EXACT SAME HARDWARE. I NOTICED THAT DIRECTX WILL NOT ALLOW AGP ACCELERATION OPTION WITH THIS IWILL MOBO. SOME GAMES LIKE UNREAL TOURNAMENT, IGI, ETC. REFUSES TO PLAY USING DIRECT3D. THIS BOARD BASICALLY SUCKS. THE ONLY REASON WHY THIS BOARD ISN'T TRASHED IS BECAUSE THE SOYO WAS HAVING MAJOR SOUNDCARD AND PCI PROBLEMS, TYPICAL OF THE DRAGON PLATINUM, SO I HAD TO SEND IT BACK. THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THIS MOBO IS THE STABILITY, AND I BELIEVE THAT IT'S ONLY BECAUSE EVERYTHING FROM THE CPU TO THE AGP, TO THE DDR IS FORCED TO RUN FAR BELOW THEIR FULL CAPABILITIES ON THIS BOARD. IF I TAKE A 2.4GHZ P4 AND RUN IT AT 1.8GHZ, IT WILL RUN STABLE, BUT IT WILL ALSO NOT PERFORM TO IT'S FULL CAPABILITY, AND THAT'S WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THIS MOBO; IT'S ONE BIG BOTTLE NECK!!!!!!!!

I wish you mobo reviewers would spend less time concentrating on overclocking and pay more attention to things like whether or not the board's documentation is accurate and whether or not the company's tech support is responsive. In the case of Iwill, the answer is no to both. The xp333's documentation states that the board supports manual assignment of PCI IRQs, but that is a lie, as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be an APIC to support that, the parameters for 'PnP OS Installed' and manual assignment of IRQs to individual PCI slots do not exist in the BIOS. I sent a half dozen different emails to Iwill tech support about this, and it was almost a year before someone finally responded that the documentation was in error, and the problem could not be fixed. Although I have the thing running Win2K with ACPI disabled, and I have a stable configuration, I cannot add another device to the system without IRQ sharing, and occasional BSODs. Based on my experiences with Iwill tech support, I would never buy another one of their products in the future.