Related Articles

The DVD266-R, of course, takes 2 of your favourite socket 370 CPUs (PIIIs or FCPGA Celerons only). Using only one processor is possible, but then why the heck are you buying a dual CPU mobo?

Like more and more motherboards these days, the board also includes a secondary IDE controller made possible by the AMI HyperDisk MG80649 chip. Not as popular as those made by Promise or High Point, but a solid solution none-the-less. This gives the board support for up to 8 IDE devices which can come in quite handy – not to mention the RAID support (RAID 0 / 1 / 10) which save the money and PCI slot that a dedicated expansion card would take up.

The 4 DIMM slots are a welcome addition as these will allow the board to be used in demanding workstation and budget server solutions. The 4GB max is a bit of a misnomer as the largest DDR SDRAM modules currently available are 512MB. Basic math (4 slots X 512MB) reveals a maximum of 2.0GB of RAM – still a significant amount by today’s standards.

The 1 AGP (4x) and 5 PCI configuration is pretty standard. A 6th PCI slot would be perfect, but considering the fact that a slot has already been saved by the on board ATA RAID chip, the 5 slots should be just fine. Also, these PCI slots are all capable of handling full length cards which gives the end user more configuration options.

As far as overclocking is concerned, the DVD266-R has better than average support. The 1MHz FSB increments from 66MHz to 200MHz are excellent as they allow the CPU(s) to be pushed right to its limits. The range of CPU voltages, from 1.6V to 2.05V, is quite good although the settings above 1.85V are moving into the “danger zone” of CPU damage, so most users will probably keep below that point. This is the reason why 0.025V increments are preferred over 0.05V ones as they offer twice the number of settings – finer tuning means better overclocking potential, without risking a fried chip.

Unfortunately there are no I/O voltage settings so hardcore overclocking potential is limited. As this board is more for workstations and servers, this should matter too much.

The onboard audio provided by the C-Audio CM8738 chip is generally better – quality and functionality-wise – than the much more common AC’97 Codec, but it is still not up to snuff with dedicated PCI sound cards. The 4.1 channel speaker support is a nice touch though.

The Iwill Smart Setup is similar to Abit’s SoftMenu III and Soyo’s COMBO Setup feature, but this one is a little more slimmed down, containing the following items: Spread Spectrum, FSB Speed, CPU Voltage, CPU Ratio (useless on all Intel CPUs which are clock-locked), and BIOS-Flash Protect. It’s quite convenient having the FSB and CPU voltage settings bundled together as those are the most commonly accessed (compared to others in this menu). This screen also display extended CPU info, including CPU type, ID, and microcode version.