The Iwill P4R533-N Motherboard
&
Kingston's PC1066 RDRAM

An i850E setup for PC1066 and validated

By Dave Altavilla
July 15, 2002


Iwill has been designing and assembling motherboards for over 13 years but only recently broke into the high end enthusiast motherboard scene.  We haven't had the occasion to review many boards from this Taiwanese OEM but they have been configuring boards as of late, with all the "creature comforts".  Best of breed motherboards these days come with a multitude of features beyond jumperless CPU configuration, including things like on board RAID controllers, 10/100 Ethernet and Surround Sound.  This motherboard however, went one step further.

Intel's recent release of the i850E chipset brought a 533MHz Front Side Bus to the Pentium 4.  This was a nice shot in the arm for overall system bandwidth but it still leaves the memory bus at 400MHz or PC800 (DDR) for the RDRAM.  Intel chose not to validate PC1066 memory with the i850E as of yet, although word is that this will be happening "soon".  Overclockers that are hell bent on performance have been taking standard PC800 modules on the i850E or i850, to PC1066 levels with ease however.  It seems odd that Intel wouldn't go the "full monty" with PC1066 for the i850E, especially since modules are now readily available.  So, what's to stop motherboard manufacturers like Iwill from validating PC1066 with the i850E?

That's exactly what Iwill did with the P4R533-N.  The Iwill P4R533-N "officially" supports PC1066, at least form Iwill's perspective, with validated modules, even though the i850E doesn't "officially" support it.  Let's have a look.

Specifications of the Iwill P4R533-N
An i850E board validated with PC1066

   

Supports single 478-pin Intel Pentium 4 processor
1.5 GHz to 2.53 GHz and higher
Supports 400 MHz and 533 MHz system bus

CPU Frequency / Voltage Select
Supports Vcore selection by BIOS
Supports CPU multiplier selection by BIOS (from 8X to 50X in 0.5 increments
Supports CPU external frequency selection by BIOS (up to 156 MHz)


Chipset
Intel 850E chipset
ICH2

System Memory
Supports PC800 and PC1066 DRDRAM
Supports ECC memory (single bit error correction, multiple bit error detection
Supports 128MB/256MB/512MB modules
Supports up to 2GB using four (4) 512MB modules


Validated PC1066 DRDRAM parts/modules
SAMSUNG:
MR16R0828BN1--CN9 1066--32
KINGSTON:
KVR1066X16-4/128 - 128MB 1066MHz 4-Device RIMM
KVR1066X16-8/256 - 256MB 1066Mhz 8-Device RIMM
KVR1066X18-4/128 - 128MB 1066MHz ECC 4-Device RIMM
KVR1066X18-8/256 - 256MB 1066MHz ECC 8-Device RIMM


Graphics
Supports AGP 4X (1.5V only)

On Board IDE
Supports two independent ATA channels
Supports ATA66/ATA100 and PIO modes
 
Audio
Support 6 channel speakers (5.1 configuration)
32-voice HRTF-base 3D positional audio
Supports Microsoft DirectSound 3D and Aureal A3D
Supports EAX sound effects (Environment Audio eXtension)
Supports Creative SB-Link protocol
Supports SPDIF via IWILL SuperAudio (optional)
 

I/O Interface
1 x Floppy disk connector
2 x IDE connectors
4 x RIMM sockets
2 x serial ports
1 x parallel port
2 PS/2 connectors (mouse & keyboard)
1 x Game/MIDI connector
1 x CD-IN, audio-in connector
1 x auxiliary audio-in connector
2 x USB ports
1 x IR connector
1 x WOL header
1 x Smart Card reader connector
1 x Memory Stick reader connector
1 x CPU temperature sensor
1 x system temperature sensor
1 x CPU fan header with PWM control
3 x system fan headers with fan control


Expansion Slots
1 x AGP slot supports AGP 4X mode only (1.5V)
5 x PCI 2.2 bus master slots

 
LAN Support
Supports HomePNA interface
Supports 10/100 Base-T (IEEE 802.3u auto-negotiation) Ethernet interface
Supports Full-Duplex Flow Control (IEEE 802.3x)
Supports remote power-up using Wake-on-LAN technology (card only)
Suports Wake-up on Magic packet through PME#
Supports Wake-up on LinkChg through PME#
Supports Wake-up on Microsoft wake-up frame through PME#
Supports Wake-up on "Interesting" packet through PME#
Supports WFM
Supports Alert-on-LAN
 

The P4R533-N kit is packed fairly well with additional components, not just the ribbon cables.  The board also includes a well written manual, driver CD, drive cables, a custom back panel face plate and C-RIMM modules for termination with RDRAM modules.  Missing from the kit are SPDIF and additional audio output brackets that are not included, in the interest of saving cost.  However, the C-Media Audio chip that is on the P4R533-N supports these features.  We would have liked the supporting hardware to go with it.  For now, these are parts that the end user will have to buy as an "option".

PC1066 Kingston RDRAM
16 Bit Dual Channel RDRAM At 1.066GHz

PC1066 RDRAM technology is fairly straight forward and easy to understand.  No magic here really, just faster memory and higher clock speeds.  The "PC1066" nomenclature refers to the actual speed of the RDRAM, in this case 1066MHz.  Specifically, PC1066 RDRAM memory runs at 533MHz DDR.  So in short, RDRAM is a DDR technology as well, sort of.  That is to say that the system performs reads and writes on the rising and falling edge of the clock, much like DDR but obviously at a lot higher clock speed.  PC1066 memory provides 4.2GB/sec of bandwidth, the highest of any commercially available PC memory.

Test system memory - Kingston PC1066 RDRAM
 
 

Kingston provided us with 512MB of PC1066 RDRAM and it performed flawlessly at its rated speed and even tolerated a fairly significant overclock.  We'll give you details on this, later in the overclocking section.  However, these Kingston modules are one of the few that Iwill has listed on their site as being validated with their board for full PC1066 performance.  We were very pleased with the overall performance of this memory.

Next, we'll get back to the layout and install of the P4R533-N and fire it up.

Layout, Installation and BIOS