Iwill DVD266-R Dual Socket-370 Apollo Pro266 Preview

Two CPUs Need More Bandwidth

Compared to the Apollo Pro133A chipset, the Apollo Pro266 offers more memory bandwidth by utilizing DDR SDRAM. We saw in our review of the chipset review that Pentium III is not memory hungry, but two Pentium III chips together can potentially benefit from the increased memory bandwidth.

The VT8633 North Bridge is the heart of the Apollo Pro266 chipset with an integrated memory controller for DDR SDRAM and AGP 1X/2X/4X support. Similar to most current motherboards on the market, the AGP slot is not keyed specifically for 1.5V or 3.3V operation, so you should have no problem using almost any AGP video card in the market.

VT8633 North Bridge.

Iwill put in a total of four DDR DIMM slots on the DVD266-R, supporting up to 4GB of DDR SDRAM. In reality, however, that's not entirely possible because 1GB DDR SDRAM modules are not available just yet. But even with the 256MB modules that are available on the market today, you can still populate a maximum of 1GB DDR SDRAM, which should be enough for most users with today's applications. The fourth DDR DIMM slot did not work on our pre-production engineering sample, but that problem should be fixed by the time the board ships.

Similar to the Apollo Pro133A chipset, you do not need to use any kind of CPU terminator if you only want to use one CPU. All you need to do is make sure the CPU is in the socket labeled "CPU0". Also, like the Apollo Pro133A, the Pro266 allows you to run the FSB and memory bus asynchronously, meaning that you can still take advantage of PC2100 DDR SDRAM while only running a 100MHz FSB Pentium III.

Unlike the Apollo Pro133A, the PCI bus is no longer used to connect the North and South Bridges, but rather a dedicated "V-Link" bus connects them instead. The South Bridge is thus the VT 8233 and supports all the features of the 686B, including Ultra ATA 100, but also adds support for a total of six USB ports.

VT8233 South Bridge.

Iwill takes advantage of all those added features of the 8233 South Bridge on the DVD266-R. The two traditional USB ports are located at the back with the ATX I/O panel, while the other two USB connectors are found on the left edge of the motherboard. Since we received an engineering sample, we don't know whether Iwill will include the USB bracket that's required to take advantage of the additional USB ports.

The two traditional USB ports.

The second and thrid USB connectors.

As we're seeing more and more these days, Iwill has implemented an optional on-board IDE-RAID controller, the American Megatrends MG80649. The controller provides an additional two Ultra ATA 100 channels with support for RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 configurations.

American Megatrends MG80649 IDE RAID controller.

The 5/1/0/1 (PCI/AGP/ISA/ACR) expansion slots configuration is considered average, since we have seen boards with as many as six PCI slots. Instead of a sixth PCI slot, we see something very interesting here, an ACR slot.

The ACR slot is actually VIA's response to Intel's CNR slot, both of which are intended to provide cheaper communication devices. The advantage of ACR slot is that it is actually an inverted PCI slot, so manufacturers do not have to use a special connector, which would increase manufacturing costs. The ACR slot is still in the early stages of development, and we have yet to see how popular it will be, especially in light of the virtual failure of AMR and CNR card availability in the retail market. Of course, just like those other interfaces, it promises to allow OEM builders to produce cheaper systems.

Iwill always pays a lot of attention to on-board audio, and they continue to use the C-Media CMI8738 on the DVD266-R. It provides much better audio quality compared to host-based AC'97 audio. For the ultimate in sound functionality, we still recommend a dedicated hardware-based PCI sound card.

C-Media CMI8738 Hardware Sound.