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JETWAY V333DA KT333 Mother Board .

This review was kindly made possible by:

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This is the first Jetway product that Ive ever used , and I must say that its a rather impressive piece of hardware . Stability @ 166mhs FSB was a little lacking until I increased the voltage to my CPU from 1.75v to 1.8v . Installing the MB into my case was a no brain'er , the Board actually being slightly slimmer than norm by about two inches ( 5 cm ) . The first problem I had was installing my Volcano 7+ , due to the location of the socket , my power supply was in the way and I was unable to clip the heatsink in place . 2nd problem was with the bios , having been set up not to boot unless the bios can read the CPU fan rpm , using a high powered cooler  directly from the power supply will see you not even being able to post . Other than these two minor hiccups everything else went just fine . ( the fan read function stopping boot can be disabled in the bios ).

 Jetway V333DA

Support Socket-A for AMD Athlon /Duron TM uni-proccessor at 266MHz Front Side Bus with double data rate
VIA Apollo KT333 System controller and VT8233A High Bandwidth Vlink Client South Bridge
Support ATA 133
Extend AGP Slot Support 4X AGP
Support 2.5V DDR200/DDR266/DDR333 DDR SDRAM
PC'99 Ready & PC'99 Colorful I/O Ports Design
Support USB Controller & PS/2 Mouse , Standard IR (infrared) Function
Provide extra " three-wire" fans connectors
JumperLess
Frequency Magic Setting
PC Health Monitoring On Post Screen
Magic Install
Bundle Recovery Genius to protect hard disk data
CPU Vcore Voltage minor adjustment
CPU ratio adjust by jumper setting
DDR DRAM Voltage2.5/2.6/2.7/2.8V ,System 3.3V,AGP 1.5V/1.6V Voltage Minor adjustable in bios
3-Phase Vcore Voltage to increase system stability
BIOS Write Protect function to avoid Virus crash data
BIOS Auto Detect CPU voltage
Y2K Compliant
ACPI Supporting For OS Directed Power Management

  1. Modem Ring remote wake up

  2. RTC alarm wake up

  3. Wake on LAN For OS

  4. Support software suspend & power off

  5. Support Power Button Ride (Instant off or Delay 4 second power off)

 

SPECIFICATION

Support Socket-A for AMD Athlon /Duron TM uni-proccessor at 266MHz Front Side Bus with double data rate

VIA Apollo KT333 System controller and VT8233A High Bandwidth Vlink Client South Bridge

CPU Bus Frequency , Choose One Step Add 1MHz From 100MHz Up to 200MHz in BIOS Setup (Frequency Magic Setting)

Support Jumpless Function by BIOS SETUP Let Users More Easier to Change The Frequency

  • Five 32-bit PCI Bus Master slots

  • One CNR (Communication Network Raiser) Slot

3 x 184-pin DDR Module Socket support DDR200/DDR266/DDR333 DDR SDRAM up to 3.0GB System memory.

  • Support 2 X IDE Connectors for up to 4 IDE Drives

  • Support PIO Mode 3 and Mode 4 and Bus Master IDE DMA, Mode 4 Timing for up to 16M Bytes/s

  • Support UTRA DMA-133 Bus Master IDE, Provide faster transfer rate up to 133M Bytes/s

  • Support LS-120 / ZIP Device

  • Support 4X AGP VGA Mode for 266MHz of AD and SBA signaling

  • Pipelined split transaction long-burst transfers up to 1GB/sec

  • Software Audio Controller With On Board CODEC Complete to AC97'

  • Support 3D Surround

  • Support 3D Positioning

  • Full Duplex Operation For Simultaneous Record And Playback

  • Sound Driver for Windows 95 , Windows98 & Windows NT4.0 , Media Rack

  • 2 X Serial Ports (16550 Fast UART Compatible)

  • 1 X Parallel Port (EPP and ECP capabilities)

  • 1 X Floppy Disk Connector (Supports 2 Floppy Drivers)

  • 1 X PS2 Mouse Connector

  • 1 X Keybord Cnnector

  • 2 X Three Wire FAN Connector (Include CPU FAN)

  • 1 X LINE IN / LINE OUT / Microphone Connector

  • 1 X Game Port Connector (Support Two Joysticks)

  • 2 X Analog Audio CD Music line Connectors (different connector)

  • 1 X Consumer IR Connector

  • 1 X Standard IR Connector (Infrared)

  • Winbond Hareware Doctor to Track CPU & SYSTEM Temperature, Voltage, Fan speed, Monitoring your Computer

  • Driver For Win95/98

  • 4 X USB Ports Connector

  • Support USB Keyboard & USB Mouse

  • ACPI/APM Power Management

  • Modem Ring remote wake up

  • RTC Alarm Wake up

  • Support Software Suspend & Power off

  • Wake on LAN For OS

  • Support Power Button Ride (Instant off or Delay 4 second power off)

Support 20-pin ATX power supply (ATX-PW)

  • Award BIOS , Support Green function, Plug and Play Function

  • 2MBit Flash ROM

ATX Form Factor with 30.5cm X 21cm

Testing :

I ran the SisoftSandra 2002 Mem Bandwidth Benchmark on the original bios and the latest bios available from the Jetway website  as well as 3Dmark2001 . System specs are , XP1600 doing 10.5 x 166mhz FSB for 1743mhz CPU clock , Maxtor ATA133 7200rpm 40gig HDD , GF2ti , win98se ( all updates ) Direct X 8.1 , via 4in1 4.38 drivers , 256meg Samsung pc2700 ram, C-media sound card , 50x CD-rom , 32x8x4 CD-RW  . First with the original as supplied bios :

SisoftSandra 2002 Mem Bandwidth Benchmark

Ram Int Buffered aEMMX / aSSE Bandwidth  2505 MB/s

Ram Float Buffered aEMMX / aSSE Bandwidth 2317 MB/s

3Dmark2001 = 5255 3Dmarks

Well time for the new bios ( V333daa3.bin ) , flashing the MB was again a no brain'er , and went nice and easily . Time to do the benchmarks again and see if there are any improvements :

SisoftSandra 2002 Mem Bandwidth Benchmark

Ram Int Buffered aEMMX / aSSE Bandwidth  2506 MB/s

Ram Float Buffered aEMMX / aSSE Bandwidth 2330 MB/s

3Dmark2001 = 5269 3Dmarks

The figures are up , ever so slightly , and the stability of the board at 166mhz FSB has also improved , overall performance figures are just ahead of my Epox 8K3A , but my Epox is more stable @ 166mhz FSB  with my XP1600 running rock stable at 1.75volts .

Conclusion :

There are many features on this MB, and I just didnt have time to play with them all  , I liked the temp shut down feature , and set it for 60deg Celsius , a nice feature should your HSF fail for what ever reason , also the VDDQ voltage adjustment ( 1.5v or 1.6v ) and VDIMM voltage ( 2.5 to 2.8v ) all for aiding stability when overclocking . At 166mhz FSB the Jetway V333DA is not quite as stable as the Epox 8K3A , even with the latest bios update , and Im sure that with some more time Jetway will provide users with even better bios updates . This board has given me no problems what so ever that were not overclocking related , ( slight instability from a lack of voltage to the cpu ) that were  solved by a simple voltage increase , even my USB optical mouse ran flawlessly during the entire time I spent with this MB , never giving a single problem .

At stock bus speed ( 133mhz ) this MB is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar , and at 166mhz FSB its rather good , giving a ever so slight improved SisoftSandra 2002 Mem Benchmarks and 3Dmarks over the Epox 8K3A . So the only thing I can harp on is the fact that at 166mhz FSB its slightly unstable compared to the Epox 8k3a , again , something that could be solved by further bios updates. ( not forgetting to mention that the PCI and AGP speeds are set to default @ 166mhz FSB , 33mhz / 66mhz ).

Over all a good easy to use MB that is fully jumperless ( almost , there is a jumper for 100mhz and 133mhz FSB ) , you can make all your adjustments through the bios , the user manual is easy to use and understand , and explains the bios settings reasonably well . 

I give this MB 8 out of 10 , the things I didnt like , the location of the socket , lack of over voltage  , other than these 2 things , its a very good MB that impressed me with its ease of use and rock solid performance @ 133mhz FSB.