Monday, November 22, 1999

Introduction

VIA, the world wide recognized chipsets manufacturer, have truly been flying full-wings since the beginning of Intel's problems with the i820 "Camino" chipset. As no other PC chipset on the market supports ATA66 (the Intel 440BX is only supporting ATA33) , and with the i820 set spinning its wheels - VIA has managed to take a lead position with the release of the Apollo Pro133 chipset; a chipset that not only supports ATA66, but also PC133 memory. Since then, a new version of the chipset - the Apollo Pro133A - has come to market, and adds 4X AGP support to its already impressive resume. At this point, Intel is truly left choking on VIA's dust... As concerns the VD133 motherboard, it sports the VIA Apollo Pro133 set. Was it perhaps to avoid Intel's ire, that Iwill opted for the Pro133 set, in lieu of the Pro133A? We can only speculate, though few manufacturers have announced adopting of the AMD Athlon - another Intel competitor - and it does seem that motherboard manufacturers are prostrating themselves in front of Intel in avoiding these competing products... All that aside, though, it's time to get down to business in analysing Iwill's newest offering. If I've gone off on a tangent, it's only due to Iwill's decision to skip over the Pro133A. It's not exactly as if this new chipset is in direct competition with the Intel i820 chipset... Oh well, time to get back to business :)).

The Features

The Iwill VD133 features 5 PCI slots, 2 ISA slots, and 1 AGP port. Also, there are 3 168-pin DIMM sockets available. As with some other boards, DIMM slot #3 will only support up to 256MB of memory. Thus, according to Iwill, a maximum of 1.25GB of memory can be installed. What happened to the other 30MB, though? As far as I'm aware 512MB + 512MB + 256MB = 1280Mb... Well, as pointed out by Mark Wong and Stian Davidsen, two readers of the site, it takes 1024 bytes to make 1Kb, thus 1280MB / 1024 = 1.25GB, that's that simple... Of course, I knew it but I was just too lazy to do the calculations, so, shame is on me hehehe :))

Configuration of the VD133 is effected totally within the BIOS menu labeled, "Iwill Smart Setting".

Available functions, are: adjustment of clock frequency, and adjustment of the clock multiplier. Adjustment of the processor's core voltage can be accomplished via jumper JP2, which allows voltage to be augmented by 5% or 10%. Jumper J10 also allows the processor's VIO voltage to be set to 3.4v, 3.6v, or 3.8v. As always, a pair of jumpers (JP11, and JP12) permit the setting of the bus frequency. Choices available include: automatic adjustment by the system, 66Mhz, 100Mhz, and 133Mhz. In all cases, the frequency of the AGP bus, and the PCI bus respectively remains at 66Mhz, or 33Mhz, in all time. In the BIOS, under the "Chipset Features Setup" menu, a function allows the operating frequency of the memory bus to be equated to that of the main bus, as determined by jumpers JP11, and JP12, with a optionally subtracted or additional 33Mhz.

Available clock frequencies - according to the user's manual - include:
66/75/83/100/103/105/110/112/115/120/124/133/140 and 150Mhz with clock multipliers available from 3X to 8X in steps of .5X.

Suite: Additional Features .