I've got an old mobo and need some help.

[Mudbone]

I have an old motherboard, a Tyan S1837UANG Thunderbolt. This is a dual processor, slot one, 440GX board. It occured to me that I have enough old parts laying around that I could put together server/backup machine for very few $. I could also use it for some DC work. My first question is will Win XP Pro run on this board and will it take advantage of the dual processors? Second, Is anyone familiar with this board or its processor limitations? It currently has only one 450MHz P III in it. There is a problem with some types of coppermine CPUs and certian FSB speeds. I can't recall the details of processor development and FSB speeds back then.

 

[DimZiE]

depends on your memory..

WinXP uses a huge amount of RAM so at least you'll need around 512MB for WinXP to run smoothly.

if i remember correctly the board supports 733 MHz PIII ( you might have to update your BIOS )

 

[Spikesoldier]

i think youre going to be limited to a p3 550 there, but maybe with the use of a slotket you can find some matched PGA370 coppermine chips and probably take it up to around 800 or so. i dont think the 440GX supported 133MHz FSB, and you really dont have a tualatin option because of that, celerons dont support SMP, and the p3 tualatins are 133MHz FSB anyway. p3 1000 100FSB parts are expensive as hell, and i think that spending money to put a SMP rig together is a waste nowadays.

you will get better performance from a single chip with much higher clock speed, i know that for example an athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz) would just smackdown 2 p3 800's, especially if the athlon was on a DDR board.

dont get me wrong, duallies are cool as hell, however if you have to invest a lot of money into it just to get it running, its considered a waste today. i remember running dual p3 1000's back in the day, it was real nice. i then sold it a week later.

good luck

 

[Mudbone]

I take it from your answers that XP will take advantage of dual processors. I don't think I would have to spend much to get this running. It already has 256Mb of memory and room for two more sticks.

Also, I found this at Tyan's site:

Will my Thunderbolt board support Pentium® III Coppermine CPUs?

Certain versions of the S1837 Thunderbolt board will only support 100 FSB Coppermine CPUs. Because of the Intel 440GX chipset, the Thunderbolt will not support 133 FSB Coppermine CPUs.

In order to find out if your board supports a 100 FSB Coppermine CPU, please check the board's ECN Label (which looks like a small, white box-shaped imprint on the motherboard surface near the BIOS chip). If a letter "G" (or later) is imprinted on the ECN label, then the Thunderbolt will support a 100 FSB Coppermine CPU.

My board has a "B" on it in the bottom corner. I take it that means that it will not support any Coppermine CPU, regardless of the FSB speed. So what was the CPU before Coppermine and what speed did they top out at? Is that what you mean by limited to 550? Well, if I could get a pair of those or another 450 and some memory, I would be in business. I just hate to throw something like this out.

 

[CrackRabbit]

I think the non copermine P3s topped out at 600mhz
You could also run Win2k, it would be a bit easier on the memory and should still support dual CPUs.

 

[Mudbone]

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
I think the non copermine P3s topped out at 600mhz
You could also run Win2k, it would be a bit easier on the memory and should still support dual CPUs.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't think about Win2k.

 

[JC]

Originally posted by: Mudbone

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
I think the non copermine P3s topped out at 600mhz
You could also run Win2k, it would be a bit easier on the memory and should still support dual CPUs.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't think about Win2k.

Win2kPro, that is

 

[ribbon13]

Windows XP pro occupies about 160mb of physical ram in ideal situation (512 or more ram). With less it will pagefile a lot. Once you have 512mb or more, I would stick with XP

 

[JBT]

384 isn't bad for Win XP either esspecially if you turn off most of the extra visual effects

 

[ribbon13]

I have 4 gigs of ram and I still turn off all the slide and fade effects. I find them annoying.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: ribbon13
I have 4 gigs of ram and I still turn off all the slide and fade effects. I find them annoying.

oh not doubt most of that stuff is turned off for me too. I was just saying it helps in terms of RAM usage for lower end systems.

 

[CrackRabbit]

Originally posted by: JC

Originally posted by: Mudbone

Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
I think the non copermine P3s topped out at 600mhz
You could also run Win2k, it would be a bit easier on the memory and should still support dual CPUs.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't think about Win2k.

Win2kPro, that is

You could use Win2k Server if you wanted to.

 

[lapierrem]

Strange, but intel lists the 440GX chipset as being a Xeon Chipset - Pentium® III
Xeon? processor, Pentium® II Xeon? processor. Still no 133 FSB, but maybe better than we're thinking here. Apparently has support for 2GB of SDRAM. Also in searching, I did find one person who claimed to have dual 1Ghz chips on the board with bios 2.00f

 

[ND40oz]

I have the tyan 440BX board and got it many years ago with a single 350 pII, I added a second PII and ran 2003 Server Enterprise on it as an AD/File/Print server. I then "upgraded to 2 PIII 600s" and still run Win 2003 Enterprise as the AD/File/Print server. Works great for my needs and I can mess around with GPs at home before I go to work to test them in our test environment. Currently testing the latest iteration of 2003 SP1 on it. I also have 512 megs of memory, once I put the latest tyan bios on it, it supported 133mhz memory.