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Thunder k7 Tyan Mobo. any good?

A

acidtear

Member
Dream Motherboard
Well, i know its expensive,
except, if i were to get the tiger MP i would have to blow 300$ more ona scsi card anyway,
Do you think the onboard scsi is comprapable to 29160n adaptec card?
Ill be running win2k/xp on this new box. will the duel cpu make it run about 150% faster? compared to a single cpu system.
What apps will take advantage of the duel cpu the most?


Also i like to duel lan and what not. this comp may be used as a gateway for internet sharing, so, it just saves 2 pci slots.

good idea?
 
acid, like you said: its a hell of a lot more expensive than tiger... its more of a server mobo... but if ya have the cash why not, eh? the onboard scsi owns.

and the duel processor thang is kinda like this:
having 2x 1 gig processor does not mean 2 gigs. everything will run EXACTLY the same except for multithreaded apps. like quake3, CAD, encoding stuff in windows media player n stuff like that. so really its plain overkill for the average user. once again, if ya have the cash, why the hell not? bragging rights for dual processor rigs are amongst the rarest and most satisfying to have! 😉
 
You're much better off with the Tiger. SCSI 160 cards are no where near $300. You can get a top notch Tekram for $185, which includes cables and terminator. Biggest downside of the Thunder, besides its very large size which won't fit in most cases, is the proprietary power supply, which basically adds over $100 to the cost of the Thunder because there will probably never be another motherboard that uses it.

For single application environments, SMP won't do much for you. The benefit of SMP comes when running multiple applications. Typical scenario, encoding media files with one CPU while playing games on the other. As a gateway for internet sharing it is completely useless. A Pentium 133 will perform that task just as well as an SMP system.
 
Thunder K7 is better suited to a true server environment -- because of the 45-degree DIMM slots and the like. I've seen them in 1U servers, and that's really where such a board belongs. It sounds like you'd be better off, as others have noted, with the Tiger MP (S2460). It uses a standard 20-pin ATX power connector, meaning you can use a regular supply (as long as the +5v can supply 30A+) instead of a custom 24-pin supply that S2462 (Thunder K7) requires. $300 for U160 SCSI? No way. Hell, you can often find 29160's for $130-$150 used or perhaps OEM. And Tekram makes a fine adapter also in the $180-200 range. $200 ought to get you the controller and a 4-device cable with terminator.

SMP machines shine in applications commonly suited to the environment - 3D Rendering, many audio/video tasks, Photoshop-esque stuff, etc. The vast majority of software makes absolutely zero use of SMP -- but if you are using certain applications, it can be a real godsend.

Pariah: hell, even an old 486 makes a decent Linux firewall 🙂
 
Yes, under 2K/XP you have the ability to set processor affinity. So you could assign one app to CPU1 and another to CPU2.
 
Also, you say it takes a 'special case'
I got the antec server case (alienware)
would it fit okay in that?
im not sure cause of the 2 network adapetrs pokin out the back
 
its a great board! i used one this summer to build a dually setup for my friend. just one major problem, its such a tight fit. i put the board, in an antec sx1030 case and i had a pretty hard time putting the hsfs on, than again maybe i have fat hands.

but its a great board. i know there are two companies that are making the powersupply y need, one of them is delta, and i think the other one is NMB..not too sure about the second one though.
 
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