Availability: Week of November 20th

Price: less than $200

A few weeks ago, we brought you a preview of the Tyan Trinity A762, an AMD 760 DDR chipset based motherboard. Today, we are bringing you a preview of the Iwill KA266-R motherboard, based on the ALiMAGiK 1 chipset, an Athlon/Duron supporting DDR chipset. Yes, that is correct, the ALiMAGiK 1 chipset. We did not say VIA, we did not say AMD, we said ALi. After skipping the entire Socket A architecture, ALi is back with an AMD chipset, and this time, they support DDR memory. Iwill has worked closely with ALi on their board development and we were lucky enough to be first to get our hands on one.

The Iwill KA266-R we tested came with five PCI, one AMR, one AGP 4x, and three DIMM slots. It is a high-end board initially aimed at system integrators, though there will be a later revision aimed at overclockers and enthusiasts. It includes an AMI ATA/100 RAID controller, which adds RAID 0,1, and 0+1 support. Between the chipset and the RAID controller, you can use up to eight ATA/100 devices with the Iwill KA266-R. On-board 4.1 channel CMI audio is also included, which should provide good enough sound for most readers. D3D, EAX, and A3D are all supported. The initial version of the board will not support overclocking very well, but Iwill tells us the enthusiast-targeted version that should soon follow will give plenty of support for overclockers.