The processor developers have always tended to make their CPUs faster. The higher grew the processor working frequencies, the more data were required to keep the CPUs busy all the time. However, despite the rapid development of the CPUs and graphics accelerators, the system memory didn't seem to be subject to the same revolutionary changes. As a result, the memory bus appeared one of the major bottlenecks of the today's systems, which brought to naught the positive effect made by the increase in the processor working frequency. So, no matter how fast the CPU got, the memory didn't let the system performance grow significantly. Therefore, the memory issue appeared one of the most vitally urgent matters this year and most manufacturers and developers started considering the possibility of shifting to new memory types, providing higher memory bandwidth. Besides, you should also bear in mind that most modern applications, including the latest 3D-games, require more and more data, which increases the memory workload even more.

As a result, the opinions split and the industry offered two different solutions to this problem. Intel allied with Rambus and started pushing forward RDRAM, while AMD, VIA and most memory manufacturers focused on DDR SDRAM promotion and development.

We have already discussed in detail the outcome of Intel-and-Rambus alliance, RDRAM, which was born as a result of their mutual efforts and turned out a very unsuccessful solution. This memory type featured a lot of drawbacks, the gravest of which were high price and high latencies (delays) when accessing memory. In fact, Intel tried to apply its financial and marketing power to make these unpleasant disadvantages not that noticeable, however, all the efforts were vain. Moreover, Intel has recently admitted that they were mistaken when turned to RDRAM and wouldn't lay themselves out any more trying to push RDRAM into the PC market. That's why RDRAM (its dual-channel version, to be more precise) is enjoying its last days in the PCs. In fact, it is still here solely due to Pentium 4 processor, because the only today's chipset supporting it is designed for use with RDRAM only.

As for DDR SDRAM, this memory type looks much more promising, even though it is coming out almost half a year later than RDRAM. At least most memory chip and module, chipset and mainboard manufacturers have already granted DDR SDRAM their support. That's why we have every right to state that the future belongs to DDR SDRAM.

We were lucky to get the opportunity to test one of the first DDR mainboards, which should start selling in early December already. This is Iwill KA266-R designed for AMD Athlon and Duron Socket A processors and based on ALi MAGiK 1 chipset.

DDR SDRAM

Before we start discussing the mainboard and its features, we would like to say a few words about the DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM technology. If we disregard some very specific technical details, the DDR working principles will appear extremely simple. Working at 100 or 133MHz the regular PC100 or PC133 SDRAM transfers one 64bit data pack per clock. DDR SDRAM carries out two data transfers per clock, i.e. it uses both: the rising and the falling edges of the clock. So, DDR SDRAM sends twice as much data than the regular SDRAM at the same working frequencies.

Like the ordinary SDRAM, DDR can be also classified into two types: 200MHz (100MHz DDR) PC1600 SDRAM and 266MHz (133MHz DDR) PC2100 SDRAM. The table below shows all the memory types available in the today's memory market:

According to this table, dual-channel RDRAM used in i850 based Pentium 4 systems features the highest bandwidth of all the memory types available today. However, DDR SDRAM undoubtedly features the best price-to-performance ratio, provided it costs 25% more than the ordinary SDRAM. Moreover, DDR memory can boast lower latency that's why unlike RDRAM, it will ensure much higher performance in those applications, which do not process streaming data.

As far as the names of two DDR types are concerned, PC1600 and PC2100, don't be surprised. At first they used to mark the memory according to its working frequency (PC100 or PC133). However, as it came to DDR working at 200 and 266MHz, marketing researchers didn't like the way PC200 or PC266 would look against the background of PC800. That's why they decided to no longer use the memory working frequency but to resort to the memory bandwidth instead, which looked much more impressive.

The memory modules exterior was also a bit modified. Although the DDR modules size remained the same, they have more pins - 184, while the regular PC100/PC133 SDRAM DIMM modules have only 168 pins.

Besides a larger number of pins, new DDR SDRAM DIMM modules feature lower voltage, 2.5V, which helps to reduce EMI (compare with 3.3V by the regular SDRAM). As for the latency, it is almost the same as by PC100/PC133 SDRAM modules and much lower than by RDRAM.

Most RDRAM fans, which become fewer and fewer day by day, are very fond of mentioning what they consider the major argument in favor of this memory type. Namely, the fact that RDRAM allows adding new channels to its dual-channel architecture, which means that you can easily increase the memory bus bandwidth. However, DDR SDRAM also has room for improvement. It will be possible to increase the memory bus bandwidth by means of rising the working frequency. In mid 2001 we should be able to see 300MHz DDR SDRAM, and then in the end of 2001, this frequency should rise up to 333MHz. The major problem most DDR memory manufacturers have to combat is the EMI, which are significantly higher in systems with faster DDR memory. That's why those DDR memory modules used in PCs support lower working frequencies than DDR chips used on graphics cards, for instance. The thing is that the chips used on the graphics cards are not combined into the memory modules and are located much closer to the graphics processor. So, they do not suffer that much from the EMI influence.

Nevertheless, in early 2003 the memory developers are going to introduce new DDR-II memory, capable of transferring four data packs per clock, just like Quad Pumped Bus of i850 Tehama chipset.

ALi MAGiK 1 Chipset

In fact, ALi announced its MAGiK 1 chipset in July, however, it started shipping in mass to the mainboard makers only now. Nevertheless, ALi MAGiK 1 appeared the first DDR chipset for AMD Athlon and Duron processors shipping to the mainboard manufacturers. Moreover, it seems to be the first DDR chipset manufactured in mass at all. AMD-760 is expected in mass only in December, and as for the DDR Socket A solution from VIA, VIA Apollo KT266, we won't see it in retail at all this year. As far as the DDR chipsets for Pentium III processors go, VIA Apollo Pro266 is again slightly delayed. So, Iwill, which started working with ALi on a new DDR mainboard based on its MAGiK 1 chipset turned out in a really favorable situation: KA266-R will not only become the first ALi MAGiK 1 based mainboard, but the first really available DDR mainboard in the world.

ALi MAGiK 1 chipset is based on a traditional architecture and is composed of the North Bridge M1647 and the South Bridge M1535D+. These two chips are connected with each other by a conventional PCI bus. In other words, ALi didn't introduce any new buses with higher bandwidth for this purpose, unlike Intel with its new hub architecture or VIA with a new V-Link bus used for bridges connection.

ALi MAGiK 1 North Bridge supports AGP 4x and EV6 system bus working at 200 and 266MHz. So, the mainboards based on this chipset will allow using not only older Athlon and Duron processors with a 200MHz FSB but also a new Athlon with a 266MHz FSB.

As for the memory controller used in ALi MAGiK 1 chipset, we think its worth discussing separately. Though this memory controller supports DDR SDRAM, it is backward compatible with the older PC66/PC100/PC133 SDRAM. However, different memory types require at least minor PCB design changes that's why we will hardly see any mainboards based on this chipset supporting regular SDRAM. The memory controller supports up to 3GB of memory from 6 memory banks. It means that there can be up to 3 DIMM slots for DDR SDRAM on ALi MAGiK 1 based boards.

Another peculiarity of this chipset memory controller is its asynchrony, i.e. you can clock the memory for the frequency different from that of the FSB. However, it turned out pretty complicated to implement high quality asynchronous functioning of this chipset in case of DDR memory. Namely, the system performance dropped quite tangibly in this case, because of the delays caused by different working frequencies of the FSB and memory bus. So, as a result, the synchronous mode provided higher performance than the asynchronous one. That's why most mainboard manufacturers make the asynchronous mode impossible to use on their products.

The South Bridge, M1535D+, can't boast any new peculiarities and supports 2 ATA/100 IDE channels, 6 USB ports, AC97 sound and a standard set of other output ports.

Iwill KA266-R Mainboard: Closer Look

Well, let's pass over to the mainboard itself. First, take a look at Iwill KA266-R specs list:

Iwill KA266-R is the first mainboard supporting DDR SDRAM that's why the first thing worth your attention is three 184-pin DIMM slots for DDR SDRAM, which allow installing up to 3GB of memory.The mainboard supports both: PC1600 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM, however, the current Iwill KA266-R mainboard revision doesn't allow to clock the memory and theprocessor bus asynchronously, that's why the memory will work at 200MHz if you install an Athlon or Duron processor with a 200MHz FSB, and at266MHz if you use a new Athlon supporting 266MHz FSB. Note that in the latter case you can't use PC1600 DDR SDRAM at all, becauseof the reason we have just described. Of course, if you use PC2100 and a CPU with a 266MHz bus the overall system performance willbe much higher than in case of a CPU with 200MHz bus. Nevertheless, Iwill promised to implement the fully-fledged asynchronous mode inthe next mainboard revision, which is due in the nearest future.

Iwill located the processor socket very close to the DIMM slots. On the one hand, this allowed to slightly reduce the PCB size that's why KA266-R feels at home in any ATX case. However, on the other hand, you may have some problems installing a cooler with a massive retention mechanism. Nevertheless, we have to admit that nothing prevents you from using popular Thermaltake coolers such as Chrome Orb and Super Orb even though the capacitors are placed very close to the mainboard Socket A.

Iwill KA266-R is equipped with a universal AGP slot, which allows using AGP 2x and AGP 4x graphics cards, 5 PCI slots and 1 AMR slot supporting cheap software modems and sound cards, which may be of certain interest to OEMs. Although most mainboard manufacturers prefer to equip their boards with an AGP Pro slot, Iwill decided to do with a regular AGP 4x slot, which seems to us quite logical. AGP Pro requires extra power supply and the graphics cards supporting it could be counted with the fingers of one hand. That's why there is hardly any use to equip the boards with AGP Pro slot right now. Full-size PCI cards fit only in two of the available five PCI slots, because the front mainboard edge is occupied by the LED and case button connectors and an infra-red port connector, which appear in the way.

By the way, there is enough space on the mainboard left edge for one more PCI slot, actually. However, Iwill didn't use it for the sixth PCI slot for some reasons. As for ISA, the engineers decided not to implement it at all. The thing is that they would have had to use an additional PCI-to-ISA bridge, if they had made up their mind to provide their ALi MAGiK 1 based product with an ISA slot, and hence the PCB size could have got bigger.

To tell the truth, the mainboard layout isn't absolutely perfect. This is most likely to be caused by the developers' intention to stuff their product with as many cool features as possible, however, it doesn't make up for some evident drawbacks. Take for instance, the ATX power supply connector, which is located at the mainboard upper edge. As a result, when the mainboard is put into the PC case, the power supply cable will hang over the CPU and memory hindering proper cooling of these vitally important system components. Moreover, with the floppy drive connector in the lower left corner the FDD cable will run all the way through the case, preventing you from approaching the system components easily and hindering the cooling of the PCI and AGP cards installed. However, the location of the AMR slot is just excellent. Since the AGP slot appears a bit farther from the DIMM slots in this case, Iwill KA266-R doesn't suffer from a very widely spread problem, when the user cannot install and remove the memory modules without removing the AGP card first. With the AMR slot where it is, nothing stands in the way.

Since Iwill KA266-R is not a cheap product (it's retail price should be somewhere around $190), Iwill equipped it with a number of quite progressive features.

First, there is an integrated ATA-100 IDE RAID controller, AMI MG80649, which is in fact a remarked CMD 649 controller. So, the mainboard has 4 IDE channels supporting ATA/100 interface. Moreover, the HDDs connected to each pair of channels of the additional controller can be arranged into 0, 1 or 0+1 RAID arrays (mirror, stripe, mirror+stripe). By the way, if you don't feel like paying extra for the RAID-controller chip on your Iwill board, you can get a special modification without this controller: Iwill KA266. You will be able to save about $20.

The second peculiarity of this mainboard stressing that it's aimed for desktops in the first place is the fully-fledged integrated hardware PCI sound controller - C-media CMI-8738. Of course, this sound controller provides a much better sounding quality than all those AC97 software codecs, most mainboards manufacturers usually equip their products with. Besides, this controller doesn't load the CPU when playing, which is an indisputable advantage. Moreover, C-media CMI-8738 supports output to five-piece acoustic systems and 3D-sound, which should leave most users more than satisfied with the sound quality provided by Iwill KA266-R mainboard. However, if you still prefer Sound Blaster Live!, which stood the test of time, or any other sound cards, you may disable the integrated sound with a special jumper.

BIOS of Iwill KA266-R is based on a popular Award Modular 6.00PG BIOS. Among the major BIOS Setup peculiarities, we should certainly mention the settings connected with DDR SDRAM configuring.

Moreover, the mainboard BIOS allows assigning IRQs to PCI slots manually, which is a really useful thing when settling conflicts between the devices. You can also change the FSB frequency via BIOS Setup, however, this time Iwill didn't implement its MicroStepping technology, which we have already seen in other Iwill products. So, the range of the allowed FSB frequencies is not that impressive, unfortunately.

We should also point out that IDE RAID controller on Iwill KA266-R has its own BIOS. So, you create and configure all the disk arrays via this special BIOS.

The mainboard also features hardware monitoring, which operation is ensured by an external ALi M5879 controller. The mainboard has 2 thermal sensors. The CPU temperature is taken by the thermal sensor located in the middle of Socket A, which is quite far from the CPU itself. That's why the real temperature is far from what the sensor shows. The second thermal sensor is located in the upper left mainboard corner. Hardware monitoring options also allow controlling four voltages. Besides, there are three cooler connectors on the board. The rotation speeds of two coolers can be also monitored on the hardware level.

And in conclusion, we would like to mention a few nice trifles, which caught our eye as soon as we took the board out of the box. First, we would like to draw your attention to a beautiful shining heatsink saying "Powered by DDR", which covers the chipset and makes the board look very up-to-date. And secondly, there is a tiny green LED at the mainboard left edge, which signals when the board is powered.

Overclocking

When we test a new mainboard we definitely can't leave out such an interesting and exciting field as overclocking. Comparing the overclocking friendly options offered by Iwill KA266-R with those offered by other Iwill mainboards, we should say that the company has made a considerable move forward. If Iwill KV200-R allowed only changing the FSB frequency, Iwill KA266-R also allows setting the CPU clock multiplier.

As we have already mentioned in our Duron Overclocking Experience article, EV6 bus used in Socket A systems is not overclocking friendly at all. Even the slightest deviation of the FSB frequency from the nominal value led to the system instability and even crashing. However, now the situation has changed for the better. ALi MAGiK 1 chipset used in Iwill KA266-R officially supports 266MHz FSB. It means that if the FSB frequency is increased from 100 to 133MHz for the processors with 200MHz FSB, then the only one to blame for the possible problems, if there are any, will be the CPU. So, from now on FSB overclocking will surely make more sense.

In order to prove our point we tried to overclock AMD Duron 650 by means of increasing the FSB frequency on two mainboards: ABIT KT7 based on VIA Apollo KT133 and our Iwill KA266-R based on ALi MAGiK 1. The results obtained showed that we were absolutely right. On ABIT mainboard the CPU overclocked only up to 715MHz (110MHz FSB), while on Iwill board our Duron CPU reached 819MHz (126MHz FSB). So, we think you shouldn't disregard overclocking the FSB with Iwill KA266-R in your system, because it is really efficient. However, as we have already mentioned, Iwill didn't provide its DDR mainboard with the possibility to increase the FSB frequency with 1MHz increments (like in its previous product: Iwill KV200-R). The BIOS Setup shows only 15 allowed FSB values. Here they are: 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 120, 126, 133, 136, 137, 140, 142 and 146MHz.

Well, let's now say a few words about the traditional ways of CPU overclocking by means of changing the CPU clock frequency multiplier. Fortunately, Iwill KA266-R allows changing this multiplier if it is unlocked in the CPU (if you want to learn more about unlocking the CPU frequency multipliers, go here). Although the only way you can change the multiplier is with the four jumpers, which is not quite convenient, it is not that bad, really.

Unfortunately, we couldn't do any extreme oevrclocking with Iwill KA266-R, which we had in our testlab, because it didn't allowchanging the CPU Vcore and Vio in any way. However, according to Iwill officials, the mass production board revision should supportVcore and Vio settings, which is a really cool issue for extreme overclocking fans.

Performance

Since Iwill KA266-R is the first mainboard supporting DDR SDRAM, which we managed to get at our disposal, we were extremely anxious to see what it was worth. So, we compared the performance of a system with Iwill KA266-R mainboard, AMD Athlon 1GHz CPU and DDR memory with the performance of a similar system with PC133 SDRAM. For a better comparison we also considered the performance of a system with Intel Pentium III CPU working at the same clock frequency. Since AMD Athlon CPU with a 266MHz FSB isn't so widely available yet, we took for our tests a CPU with a 200MHz front side bus. Of course, we had to use PC1600 DDR SDRAM with it as well. However, as soon as we manage to get an Athlon with 266MHz FSB we will definitely return to our tests of DDR system based on Iwill KA266-R and provide you with the performance results for PC2100 DDR SDRAM.

So, for our experiments we assembled three testing systems with the following configurations:

All the tests were run under Microsoft Windows98.

Below you can see a picture of the Iwill KA266-R based system, which took part in our tests:

First of all we suggest taking a look at the results obtained by Iwill KA266-R based system with PC1600 DDR SDRAM in memory tests:

As you can see from the graphs above, DDR SDRAM proves really faster due to higher memory bus bandwidth. This is especially noticeable in case of memory write operations. In this case the performance gain provided by PC1600 DDR memory makes about 35%.

And now let's consider the results achieved in a synthetic test called SiSoft Sandra 2001:

Again you can clearly see the effect made by PC1600 DDR SDRAM. The performance of Iwill KA266-R based system appears about 15% higher in case of ALU memory operations and about 45% higher in case of FPU memory operations. This test once again proves that DDR systems feature a much higher memory bandwidth.

However, synthetic tests do not always reflect the real state of things adequately. So, let's take a look at the effect made by the use of DDR SDRAM in real applications.

This benchmark measures the system performance in a couple of content creation applications working in parallel. As you see, DDR SDRAM is no longer so impressive as in the synthetic benchmarks. However, even a 3% performance gain may be significant. These 3 percents helped AMD Athlon 1GHz based system to leave behind its competitor based on a CPU from Intel, Pentium III 1GHz.

This is one more benchmark using content creation and office applications to measure the system performance. However, here the results were taken for each application separately, independent of the other tasks that's why the memory workload is slightly lower here. So, both systems with AMD Athlon CPU, with PC1600 DDR SDRAM and PC133 SDRAM, performed very close to one another. However, in case of content creation applications, which require more memory resources than the regular office applications, a system with Iwill KA266-R and DDR memory left its counterpart with PC133 SDRAM 1% behind.

To estimate the system performance in this 3D modeling application we took the time each system required to render Anisotropic Wheel scene at 800x600. So, take note that the smaller is the value (the less time the system needed), the better. Since in 3D Studio MAX the major workload falls upon the processor FPU and not upon the memory bus, we see absolutely identical results in both systems with AMD Athlon 1GHz processor. In other words, the bandwidth of PC133 SDRAM will be quite enough for 3D Studio MAX users.

Although archiving utilities process small amounts of data when arranging their dictionaries, the use of faster PC1600 DDR SDRAM provides a performance gain in WinZIP of up to 4%.

In case of default settings this archiving utility uses the memory resources more intensively than WinZIP and so, the results don't keep us waiting for long. Iwill KA266-R based system proves 6% faster than the system based on a mainboard supporting regular PC133 SDRAM.

Now we are to pass to the performance of our DDR system in gaming applications.

In fact, this synthetic benchmark very precisely reflects the real state of things. So, in case of Iwill KA266-R based system with PC1600 DDR memory we obtained a 2-3% performance increase compared to the results shown by other testing participants. We have every right to expect the same performance gain in games now.

The results in Quake3 show that the memory bus is not the major system bottleneck for the today's games. Therefore, the performance difference between the systems with PC133 SDRAM and PC1600 DDR SDRAM makes only 1-2%. However, in the next generation games using larger textures we will definitely see a much higher performance gain provided by faster memory.

The same thing happens in Unreal. However, here the performance difference between the Athlon systems is hardly noticeable at all.

In Expendable, which works with memory much harder, Iwill KA266-R plus DDR SDRAM prove much faster. The gap makes about 2% here.

Well, all the tests show that the real performance gain provided by the higher memory bus bandwidth of PC1600 DDR SDRAM is not that incredible. However, you should take note of a couple of things before drawing any conclusions about the DDR efficiency.

First of all, you should keep in mind that Iwill KA266-R mainboard is not a serial piece, but just a test sample. We are pretty sure that updated BIOS versions will help improve its performance. Secondly, we tested Iwill KA266-R with PC1600 DDR SDRAM and not PC2100 DDR SDRAM. In case of faster memory together with a new CPU supporting 266MHz FSB should undoubtedly result into a much higher performance gain. And thirdly, the performance gain of a DDR system directly depends on the CPU speed: the faster is the processor, the higher is the performance. So, as soon as new faster CPUs come out, the DDR will show its best.

Stability

Since Iwill KA266-R was the first DDR mainboard we ever saw so closely, we devoted particular attention to testing its stability and reliability. And we have to admit that we were very happy with the obtained results.

We have to admit that now ALi chipsets have definitely improved and the products based on them show much higher stability and reliability at work. Maybe it is also Iwill who should be praised for very thorough and accurate mainboard design. Maybe, ALi MAGiK 1 chipset has been more carefully tested and checked before mass manufacturing that's why a mainboard based on it proved much more reliable.

Nevertheless, we have to stress that Iwill KA266-R based system proved as stable as ABIT KT7 based one. And ABIT KT7 is known to be one of the best pieces on VIA Apollo KT133.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any AMD-760 based board at hand and couldn't compare them with Iwill KA266-R. However, the stability and reliability of Iwill KA266-R are high enough for you to be very happy with it anyway.

Conclusions

Well, first of all we should point out that the results shown by the system with DDR SDRAM were a bit disappointing. Only 5% performance gain in real applications the DDR system could boast compared to the same system with PC133 SDRAM seems just miserable, especially taking into account that PC1600 DDR SDRAM bandwidth is 1.5 times higher than that of PC133 SDRAM. However, we wouldn't blame the DDR memory architecture for this relatively unimpressive performance. It is most likely to be connected with the fact that we had a pre-production mainboard sample and not the final BIOS revision. So, we expect the final mainboard versions to work faster, especially if the system includes PC2100 and a new CPU supporting 266MHz FSB. We will definitely run all these tests once again as soon as we get the corresponding CPU.

As far as the Iwill KA266-R mainboard is concerned, we have to admit that Iwill did a great job and appeared the first company to start pushing the DDR technology into the mass market. KA266-R will be the first mainboard supporting DDR SDRAM manufactured in mass and it will undoubtedly make its owners happy. It not only supports one of the today's fastest memory types, but can also boast a number of really interesting features including the integrated ATA-100 RAID IDE controller and integrated four-channel sound controller. Unfortunately, Iwill KA266-R is not free from some drawbacks such as relatively limited overclocking options. However, this mainboard will still be a good choice for those of you who are looking for a progressive high-performance system showing high stability and reliability at work.