Iwill BD100Plus BX Slot-1

The BIOS supplied with the BD100Plus by default is version 4.50PG of the Award BIOS setup, which unfortunately means that you don't get to enjoy the updated interface and features the new v4.60PG BIOS offers. Regardless, the BD100Plus does allow for the individual assignment of IRQs to each of the 5 PCI slots on the board, a feature reserved to BX6 Revision 2.0 owners alone as the BH6 unfortunately didn't allow for this very useful option. Not only does this allow for a quick and easy method to solving IRQ conflicts, but it can also be useful if you wish for the IRQ of a certain peripheral to remain constantly assigned to a certain value across multiple OSes and across multiple hard drives if you are prone to switching different drives often. The latter is truly useful in a testing lab situation, however the main function of the feature is to aid in preventing and solving IRQ conflicts, a definite plus for this BD100. The BIOS also suggests some minimal performance enhancing settings such as a recommendation to select CAS 2 upon boot. Hardware monitoring information is provided in the BIOS as well.

Featuring the popular Winbond 83781D to monitor two onboard fans, 7 voltages, and up to 3 temperatures, the BD100Plus leaves one of its three fans without monitoring capabilities. The reason for "up to 3 temperatures" is that the Winbond hardware monitor can only monitor one temperature on its own - the temperature of the Winbond chip itself. In order to monitor the other two temperatures, such as that of the CPU, the Winbond chip requires an external thermistor. Unlike most other manufacturers using the Winbond monitoring chip, Iwill has included a convenient clip on thermistor for mounting to the CPU. A single external thermistor header is present near the CPU, and Iwill provided an external thermistor for this very purpose. A second thermistor is already present directly underneath the SC242 (Slot-1) connector, and the third and final thermistor is present next to the 2-pin ATX soft on connector towards the end of the second ISA slot.

Out of the 24+ hours AnandTech tested the Iwill BD100Plus, it crashed a total of two times, both crashes weren't related to memory or other hardware issues rather seemingly software related crashes. While overclocked, even when using the 124MHz FSB setting, the BD100Plus performed on par with the ABIT BX6 Revision 2. The test bed's stability at 133MHz was hindered due to the unwillingness of the Matrox G200 to operate at the overclocked 88MHz AGP frequency. The performance of the BD100Plus was slightly higher than what competing boards tend to pull in as far as Winstone and Quake 2 benchmarks are concerned, however as AnandTech has made it a point to stress, performance should not be the deciding factor in any motherboard purchase unless the board in question is an unusually slow performer.

Iwill bundled the BD100Plus with a free copy of McAfee VirusScan as well as Adaptec EZ-SCSI 5.0. The latter was included most likely as a result of Iwill's extensive line of motherboards equipped with on-board SCSI controllers. The board also features the standard set of Bus Mastering drivers and patches for Windows 9x as well as a complimentary copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader.