Friday, November 26, 1999

Introduction

It has been a while since I've had the pleasure of testing a dual-processor motherboard. It is thus with great pleasure that I take on the analysis of the Iwill DBS100.

Contrary to other dual-processor boards that I've tested, the Iwill DBS100 does not include a SCSI Ultra-2 controller, but rather an Ultra Wide SCSI controller, supported by the Adaptec AIC-7895 chipset. In practical terms, this signifies transfer speeds of 40MB/sec, rather that 80MB/sec, as with Ultra 2 SCSI.

Will this have a noticeable impact on overall performance? We'll soon find out.

The Features

First off, a look at the included features. The Iwill DBS100 includes 4 PCI slots, 2 ISA slots, 1 AGP port, and - surprise, surprise - a RAIDport II connector. Of what use is the RAIDport? Quite simply, it allows the motherboard to be hooked-up to an Adaptec ARQ-1130CA-BRADIport II, and support RAID 0, and RAID 1 modes. RAID allows several hardrives to share data in such a way that greatly increases data integrity, and transfer speeds. Finally, 4 168-pin DIMM sockets are available, for a maximum possible memory of 1GB.

As concerns the configuration of the DBS100, within the "Iwill Smart Settings" BIOS submenu, we find the options to alter clock frequency, and the clock multiplier. Adjustment of the processors' core voltage is done individually, at jumper JP9 for the first processor, and through jumper Vcore2+ for the second. It is possible to raise the core voltages of each processor by 5% or 10%. Another jumper, labeled J10, permits one to adjust the VIO voltage of both processors to 3.4v, 3.6v, or 3.8v. Also, jumper JP11 allows the bus frequency to be set. Choices include: automatic adjustment by the system and/or to force a FSB frequency of 66Mhz, 100Mhz, and 133Mhz. In all cases, the frequencies of the AGP, and PCI busses are automatically adjusted at respectively 66Mhz and to 33Mhz.

Available clock frequencies are including: 66/68/75/83/100/103/112, and 133Mhz. Clock multipliers are available from 2X to 8X, in steps of .5X.

Next: The additional features.