Conclusion
Iwill's P4HT-S impresses on a number of fronts. The packaging and presentation is generally good (bar the lack of an external USB2.0 header). The PCB colour, the matching retention bracket, AGP slot, and the innovative Northbridge LEDs help distinguish it from the number of homogenous motherboards that are currently doing the reviewing rounds. The layout, apart from the ill-located USB2.0 header, is pretty good. I favour the revised Promise IDE ports location at the very bottom of the motherboard.
It seems as if everyone is interested in manufacturing premium, feature-laden motherboards these days. The P4HT-S is no different in that respect. RAID is catered for in both standard IDE and S-ATA flavours. The seemingly ubiquitous Realtek ALC 650 6-channel sound and 10/100 Ethernet controller are present. The emphasis on sound is further reinforced with the ability to power 6 speakers and export sound via the S/PDIF output. Iwill have gone with 2 DIMM slots, perhaps in the knowledge that filling all 3 DIMM slots on an Intel DDR-based motherboard is inherently difficult.
The BIOS is amongst the strongest I've seen. You're presented with numerous options for maximising the performance from your system. The much-needed AGP/PCI bus lock is naturally included. As this motherboard is clearly geared towards those with an overclocking bias, I would have liked to have seen voltage adjustment for AGP cards. It's present on some motherboards.
When you consider that the Iwill ran our test 2.8GHz CPU up to 15MHz slower than a comparison motherboard, performance was consistently good. Our 5 DDR motherboards in the benchmarking test all ran system memory at DDR333 (all officially supported) with the tightest timings, It was of no surprise, then, that all performed similarly.
There's a lot of good in the P4HT-S, but if were to make a couple of recommendation, I would have liked Firewire support. This high-speed standard is preferred by many who delve in digital video, or require external peripheral support. I would also have liked to see Iwill specify brackets that allowed one to use all the USB2.0 ports on offer. As the emphasis seems to be on style, matching red IDE cables and accessories would have been nice.
In summary, if you're looking for a performance-based motherboard with a touch of class, and want to be a little different from the crowd, the Iwill P4HT-S should be a prime candidate. Priced at around £120, it's not cheap, but quality never is.
Highs
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Looks a million dollars
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BIOS is excellent, as is stability.
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Performance was impressive in all of our benchmarks
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Overclocking potential is huge
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Specified with useful features
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Native Hyper-Threading and DDR33 support
Lows
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There is a lot of competition in this particular market
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Maybe a little difficult to get hold of here in the UK
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Purely personal, but I would have liked Firewire support and colour-coded cables
Another impressive showcase for the i845Pe chipset. Overall rating - 8.5/10. Recommended.
