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Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/119
Tyan S1846 Tsunami ATX BX Pentium II Board
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 27, 1998 12:29 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Building on success is one thing, living off of past success is another. One of the previous two can be respected and admired, the latter, frowned upon and degrading to the individual or individuals that managed to ruin their reputation by engaging in such a feat. Where does Tyan fit into all of this? Well, their products in the past have almost always given users reasons for driving down the Tyan route rather than the competitions' path, however their newest motherboard, the Single Processor Tsunami ATX based on the Intel 440BX chipset provides users with a new perspective on Tyan's product line...and it isn't one of quality.
Anand Tech Report Card Rating 90/B+
CPU Interface | Slot-1 |
Chipset | Intel 440BX |
L2 Cache | N/A (on-chip) |
Form Factor | ATX |
Bus Speeds | 66 / 100 MHz |
Clock Multipliers | 2.0x - 5.0x |
Voltages Supported | 1.5v - 3.5v (Auto Detect) |
Memory Slots | 3 168pin DIMM Slots |
Expansion Slots | 1 AGP Slot 5 PCI Slots 2 ISA Slots (1 Shared / 3 Full Length) |
BIOS | AMI WinBIOS |
Exploring uncharted waters, Tyan became one of two manufacturers (the other being the newly established MTech/Soyo team) to outfit their single processor BX motherboard with 5 PCI slots to complement the 1 AGP and 2 ISA slots. Filling the space between the Slot-1 and the 3 DIMM slots at the edge of the ATX form factor motherboard is the formidable opponent, the Intel 440BX chipset, providing the Tsunami ATX with the 100MHz Front Side Bus Frequency that the market has patiently waited for eagerly throughout the last year.
As with most Tyan motherboards, the Tsunami
ATX features the oh-so-useful Green Power LED on the board in addition to the relatively
tiny PC Speaker located in the lower left hand corner of the motherboard. The latter
would seem like a pointless feature, however by placing the PC Speaker on the motherboard
itself, Tyan allows you to rip the bulky unit out of your case and replace it with
something much more productive and much less useful, a secondary case fan would be ideal,
all of this is made possible while retaining the full functionality of a PC Speaker in
your system. As to how useful that would be in normal everyday situations, that is
an entirely different review in itself. The unusual location of the CMOS Battery in the crowded lower right hand corner of the motherboard gives way to the interesting layout of the Tsunami, however the crowded battery itself is the power behind keeping all of the information stored in the "user friendly" AMI WinBIOS up to date. |
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For those of you not familiar with
the AMI WinBIOS Setup, it closely resembles the now abandoned interface of Windows 3.11.
By using this interface American Megatrends, the creators of the BIOS, managed to
mask the high-end and extremely configurable core of their top notch BIOS Setup behind a
layer of good-looks and a hardly intimidating interface. Like its competing Supermicro counterpart, the Tyan Tsunami's AMI WinBIOS Setup takes advantage of the Serial Presence Detect on PC100 SDRAM modules to automatically configure your SDRAM timings with the ideal balance of performance/stability in mind, making AnandTech's Suggested BIOS Settings redundant and therefore pointless in listing for PC100 owners (using non-PC100 memory at the 100MHz bus speed is virtually impossible). |
In this case, building upon their past successes, Tyan once again delicately put together a great looking and definitely useful User's Manual whose class can be ranked among the ABIT's, ASUS', and AOpen's in the market. The attractive cover of the manual, and the informative back including information about Tyan as well as how to reach them are the icing on the cake, making this Manual one of the best in the business.
The uncommonly easy to configure jumpers on the Tsunami make the initial setup and configuration of Tyan's BX Pride a breeze, you can either follow the directions on the manual or those printed on the motherboard itself, either way you will have very little trouble setting this board up.
If Tyan had paid as much attention to laying out the motherboard as they did to laying out the manual, maybe this part of the review would've been featured in the Good section, unfortunately they didn't, so here we go. Have fun plugging in your ATX Power Supply cable, which passes over not only the Slot-1 SEC and the BX Chipset, but also over the DIMM slots stopping at the very feet of the IDE connectors. Once you get all of your HDD/FDD cables plugged in, expect a grand ol' mess in your ATX case, regardless of how much room you have in there.
Tyan had the attention to detail to place a Green Power LED on the board, as well as a PC Speaker on the board...but why is it that they didn't have the attention to detail to place even a relatively cheap heatsink on the BX chipset like every single manufacturer has done with their BX boards? Even the low cost DFI P2XBL features this little addition while keeping the cost well below most of the competition.
The presence of only 3 DIMM slots shouldn't be a problem for most users, however the reasoning behind this is most likely because the lack of capacitors between the BX chipset and the Memory Banks could possibly cause instability when using more than 3 DIMMs in conjunction with each other, even with 3 DIMMs installed you can't expect the most stability out of the Tsunami ATX as a result of this.
Finally, don't plan on overclocking with the Tsunami ATX other than with a Pentium II - 233 or 266 (taking them up to 300/66 at most). Tyan seems to have abandoned their brief affair with overclocking on their Socket-7 motherboards with their BX boards, since the Tsunami takes the extra step to detect what Bus Speed it should run your processor at depending on whether it is a Pentium II 233/266/300/333 or a Pentium II - 350/400. Since the 350/400's aren't overclockable using the 100MHz bus speed, this leaves Pentium II - 233 and 266 owners (provided that their chips aren't clock-locked, Celeron 266 owners can also take their chips up to 333MHz on this board) with the option of overclocking on this board.
Recommended SDRAM
Recommended SDRAM: Corsair PC100 SDRAM; Memory
Man PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM
Manufacturer: Corsair Microsystems
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.nf-ny.com
Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com
In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.
How I Tested
Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again. All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.
Business Winstone 98 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed. If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed
After each motherboard was tested a complete format of the test hard drive was initiated and the OS/benchmarking software was re-installed afterwards a defragment was initiated using Windows 95's Disk Defragmentation Utility
Tests using AGP Video cards were run under Winstone 97 and Winstone 98
No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability
All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results
All tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 256 colors
Test Configuration |
|
Processor(s): | Pentium II Celeron - 266 OEM Pentium II - 300 Retail Pentium II - 400 OEM |
RAM: | 1 - 64MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM DIMM 1 - 64MB Memory Man PC100 SDRAM DIMM |
Hard Drive(s): | Western Digital Caviar AC21600H |
Video Card(s): | Matrox Millennium II (4MB WRAM - AGP) |
Bus Master Drivers: | Intel v3.01 |
Video Drivers: | MGA Millennium 4.03.00.3410 |
Operation System(s): | Windows 95 Service Release 2.1 |
Ziff Davis Winstone - Windows 95 Performance |
||
Business Winstone 98 | Business Winstone 97 | |
Intel Pentium II - 300 (66 x 4.5) | 21.3 | 64.8 |
Intel Pentium II Deschutes - 350 (100 x 3.5) | 22.9 | 69.3 |
Intel Pentium II Deschutes - 400 (100 x 4.0) | 24.3 | 72.6 |
Intel Pentium II Celeron - 266 (66 x 4.0) | 16.1 | 50.5 |
Among the low cost boards out there, the Tyan Tsunami is an excellent choice as long as you don't wish to overclock much. Pick up a Celeron with one of these low cost storms and you'll have a great system on your hands, at a great price. For those of you searching for the best BX board however, I suggest you take a look in the direction of ABIT, AOpen or ASUS.