Massive 10 Motherboard i845E/G Roundup Traditionally, Intel chipsets have always been the fastest and most stable for Intel processors; just consider the venerable i440BX, i815E or even the i850E. Table of Contents Filed under: Motherboards Published:  Author:  External Mfg. Website: Various Oct 23 2002   C. Sun   Home > Reviews > Motherboards > Various

Iwill's first motherboard in the roundup is the P4GS. The P4GS is a value motherboard, and with a quick glance towards the hardware features we can see that the P4GS is a pretty well rounded motherboard to boot.

The P4GS has on board 10/100 LAN, 5.1 audio, IDE Raid, Serial ATA, support for memory stick and secure digital cards. There are five PCI slots should you find the need to upgrade a part of your computer, a 4x AGP (1.5V lock) slot and USB 2.0 comes native thanks to the ICH4 southbridge.

As you probably noticed, there are only two DIMM slots which can support 2 GB PC1600/2100 memory (PC2700 unofficial support).

The main ATX power connector is in an excellent location to the right of the DIMM slot, and even though the P4 power connector is to the left of the CPU socket, it's near the top of the motherboard. Iwill uses a sliding AGP lock rather then the usual switch which is easier to use then the regular switch.

With more and more high speed USB 2.0 devices coming out, Iwill has put an internal USB 2.0 slot on the motherboard. At first glance, we thought that perhaps it should be closer to the edge of the motherboard to keep out of the way of other things, but then we realized that Iwill probably put the USB socket next to the PCI's to prevent it from being broken off.

If you ever wanted to have an internal USB2.0 hard drive hooked up, this would be the board that would make that dream come true.

The P4GS not a perfect example of the motherboard makers art; the weirdest thing about the board is the location of the IDE RAID connectors. They are located below the PCI slots which is a change from the norm - and can potentially make things difficult for users of full tower cases who will have to wrap the IDE cables around the PCI/AGP peripherals to get to the IDE drives.

The P4GS only has one Serial ATA connector (there is evidence that the board could support four however), which won't be too useful when Serial ATA drives finally arrive on the market place this fall.

From the results of the benchmarks it is clear that the Iwill P4GS is not a speed demon, but neither was it meant to be. The P4GS is targeted towards the average user who doesn't waste their time with overclocking, so Iwill's goal here is aimed at providing good value to the user, and features, features, features. For a street price of $190 CDN ($125 US) the P4GS is certainly very well equipped!

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