Iwill KV200-R Socket-A KT133 ATX

Similar to other KT133 motherboards, the 8373 memory controller in the KV200-R is nice enough to let you run your memory at either 133MHz or 100MHz.  Therefore, users with PC133 SDRAM can take advantage of the increased bandwidth over PC100 SDRAM, going from 800MB/s to 1.06GB/s.  This can be done easily in the BIOS by setting the memory bus to +33MHz.  It also allows PC100 SDRAM owners to continue to use their memory by leaving the memory bus at 100MHz while taking the performance hit associated with the decrease in memory bandwidth. 

Generally, in order to maintain high levels of stability for the system, motherboard manufacturers put as many high quality capacitors as possible around the CPU socket.  This guarantees sufficient power for the CPU and clean signals going in and out of the CPU.  The KV200-R features six 2200uF and seven 1500uF capacitors around the 462-pin Socket-A interface.  Some of the capacitors are a bit close to the socket which can be a problem for users that are attempting to install some of the larger heatsink/fan combos that are being used on Athlons so be very careful.

The 5/1/1/0 (PCI/AGP/AMR/ISA) expansion slot configuration on the KV200-R should be enough for most users.  One thing we noticed is that the AMR slot is not shared, so it seems that Iwill targets this motherboard for the OEM market.  However with the relative lack of any adaptation of the AMR specification in the actual production of AMR cards, we see Iwill’s failure to provide the AMR slot as a shared slot, a waste of PCB space.  This is because of the fact that in order to keep the AMR slot as a separate slot, Iwill gives up a PCI / ISA slot.  Since the VIA 686A “Super” South Bridge supports up to 5 PCI slots and also features an integrated PCI-ISA bridge, Iwill could have included another PCI or ISA slot.  Now the AMR slot takes away one of them, and that is bad news for users with many PCI devices or users who have ISA modems or old ISA SCSI controllers for tape drives that they were planning on using.

The VIA 686A South Bridge also supports up to 4 USB devices.  Beside the two traditional USB ports mounted at the back of the motherboard together with the serial / parallel ports, there is also a connector for USB 3 and 4 on the left edge of the board.  However, Iwill, like most other manufacturers (other than ASUS), fails to include any USB headers to take advantage of the extra two USB connectors.

The VIA 686A South Bridge provides two IDE channels that are both ATA-66 ready.  These channels still support ATA-33 devices, so users can still use their CDROMs and ATA-33 hard drives, but they do allow users to attach a total of 4 ATA-66 IDE devices.

Just like the ABIT did with their KT7-RAID, Iwill also added in an ATA-100 RAID controller on the KV200-R.  The controller they use is made by one of the biggest names when it comes to RAID, American Megatrends.  The American Megatrends HG80649 controller supports 2 ATA-100 channels, which means users can connect up to 4 ATA-100 devices.  Although as of now, there are no IDE drives that feature sustained transfer rates higher than 40MB/s, this is still a good preparation for future generations of IDE devices.  Like the HighPoint controller on the ABIT, the AMI IDE RAID controller on the KV200-R supports RAID 0, 1, and 0+1 functions, which are the most popular options nowadays.  The absence of RAID 5 support is another indicator that while IDE RAID may be an interesting arena to toy in, it is still far from the level of performance and especially reliability of hardware SCSI RAID 5 solutions.

Even for users with only one ATA-100 hard drive, they can use the RAID controller as two regular ATA-100 channels by disabling all RAID functions.  Just like other motherboards with external ATA-100 IDE controllers, the HG80649 is represented as a SCSI controller in the BIOS setup, and users just need to choose SCSI as first boot device in order to boot with their ATA-100 hard drives.