IWILL Board is messin with my head! 166 fsb? questions inside

[Turin39789]

So now that this iwill board comes along doing 166, which would you take the iwill or the kt7a?

 

[DaddyG]

The IWILL has been reviewed several times at 166 and I believe that this happens for 2 reasons. IWILL uses very conservative memory timings, they bench quite slower than ABIT at the same clock. Secondly, the 'big' guys bought all the the first rev of the KT133A Northbridge, thats rev A0. IWILL had to wait and got rev A1, it seems to dance a bit higher than A0. I don't like ABIT mobos cause of the high RMA rates, but I have to say that I have little first hand knowledge of IWILL.

If overclocking's your bag then I would look at mobos with dips. BIOS OCing is having some issues.

 

[Turin39789]

Damn, and i just ordered the kt7a raid. Please post more views here, i may decide to try the iwill anyway

 

[Insane3D]

Also, I beleive the Northbridge on the reviewed Iwill boards was not even a production one. I read this somewhere..supposedly you can tell because it does not have the metal circle in the center of the northbridge...
Also, as far as memory timings, DaddyG is right. I get almost the same scores at 150mhz on my KT7A-RAID as the Iwill got at 165+...

 

[DaddyG]

Insane man, Its possible that one reviewer had a pre-production Northbridge but I'm pretty certain about the A0 vs A1 rev. Its always a trade off with memory timings. I tend to like conservative settings as they normally accomodate a wider selection of RAM. Memory benches don't mean much in real life use anyway. With cache hit rates of 85% plus, most apps don't see any improvements. There's alot of mobo makers offering OCing options, the real issue is, which of them will stand by them if you have problems. I don't believe that MSI has produced a solution to its problems with flakey multipliers on its KT133. Yes, MSI is stable, but if buy a mobo for overclocking and have issues and the mobo maker blows you off, its useless.

SOYO recently began shipping their 133A mobo, still uses dips because SOYO engineers believe thats the only way to get stable OCs every time. BIOS overclocking is convenient, but the CPU MUST initialize at some default multiplier, FSB and voltage, BEFORE the BIOS can over-ride them.

 

[Lorne]

I suggest the KT7A, Ive had many Iwill MB, Live very close to them, Ive returned so many and had so many reworked for many stupid problems, There support blows also, cant even get any answers from the website.
As soon as the next model mb comes out yours loses all support.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

I gotta agree with DaddyG on the dip switch issue. However there is ways to set a BIOS controlled multiplier and voltage without having the system need to be initialized before effectiveness. No clue if any manufacturer has done it that way or not though.

 

[Insane3D]

"BIOS overclocking is convenient, but the CPU MUST initialize at some default multiplier, FSB and voltage, BEFORE the BIOS can over-ride them."

I have to disagree with that statement DaddyG. If that was true, my 1.2ghz Thunderbird at 9 X 150 would, by that reasoning, be "initializing" at 1800mhz (12 x 150). Since I have my voltage at below the default of 1.75v (1.7v), I highly doubt that my CPU would make it past that moment of 1800mhz at a 150mhz FSB...

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Insane3D: It's probably initializing at 12x100, kicking into 9x100, then turned upto 9x150

 

[Insane3D]

That makes sense, but that means the reason the Epox boards can't run a 133 mhz FSB is strictly a Epox bios implementation issue, right? That would mean bios overclocking is just as effective as dipswitches...as long as it is setup to initialize the CPU correctly...

 

[DaddyG]

Insane3D, BIOS overclocking can never be as reliable as dips. Remember BIOS code has to executed by the CPU. Some sequence has to exist for initialization. Its possible that different mobo makers use different sequences, but the multiplier, FSB and cpu voltage must be set. Maybe its possible to disable errors in this process, but sometimes it fails. Dips switches, over-ride all the cpu defaults directly. The CPU NEVER sees the original settings. Many people have been able to get higher OCs simply by connecting all the L7 bridges, which initializes the cpu with higher voltage and doesn't rely on the BIOS. ABIT seems to be the King at BIOS OC but even they are having issues. I don't think its a coincidence that ASUS left the dips on the mobo. SOYO has stated absolutely that their testing found dips to be more reliable. Gigabyte, one the most stable mobo makers also uses dips on their KT133A.