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Tyan Thunder 2500 (S1867DLUAN) - Dual Slot 1 Mobo

All I know is that it's supposed to have outrageously fast AGP performance, _better_ than AGP4x/Fast Write on a regular motherboard, even though it's only AGP 2x/Pro.
 
I've got mine 4 months and so do a couple of other people on 2cpu.com. The Tyan s1867 Thunder 2500 is available in small quantities, so you better check with Tyan first to see where you can purchase it. It's rather pricey though: 800 - 1000 US$, but then again: it's a great board...

One thing though: it only works with REGISTERED sdrams (which are a bit more expensive)


kvd
 
Thanks kvd, and welcome to Anand 🙂

I think I will wait a while before buying one. The board is definitely worthwhile (but a bit pricey since I would have to get new RAM modules 🙁 ). How much faster is it in AGP performance (and how does it fare in other areas) compared to an 840 board?
 
I've got no idea how the agp-performance is compared to a i-840 based motherboard. I bought this board because I didn't trust the 840/sdram-combo (which indeed turned out to be a disaster) and a 840/rdram-combo was way too expensive.

Anyway, there were a couple of initial problems with the motherboard since it shipped with a preliminary bios. A first non-beta bios was put up on the Tyan-site some weeks ago and most problems have vanished. (some people (incl. myself) had problems with system-freezes running Win2K, on WinNT4 there were no such problems...)

The only thing that still causes occasional systemfreezes/programcrashes is videocard-related. I suspect it's a driver-thingie: I run an Elsa Gloria II in the AGP-bus. When using the Elsa drivers, the whole thing freezed like 10 times a day. The system became more stable when nVidia's 6.18 (detonator 3) reference drivers became available. Since then I've upgraded the bios, but I've had no time to test the Elsa-drivers with the new bios yet. (I'm planning on testing these again within a few weeks, I have some production-deadlines now that I can't afford to miss).

The only real trouble with the nVidia-drivers is their very poor OpenGL-performance in 3D-applications (I'm not talking games here...). The good old Heidi-driver performs more stable than the OpenGL-driver....

Anyway, it's a great board (it's used in the Intergraph ZX10 Server and that's one mean machine ;-) )and when I have some time, I'll run a few benchmarks on it. As for now: if you don't need it immediately, I advise to wait a bit: it will become cheaper (don't expect it to drop to 200 US$ though...) and a few more bios-upgrades are expected.


As for the rest of the system: this is my current configuration:

OS: Win2Kpro
Fongkai FK320 extended ATX-case with 2 120mm coolers (black case, since beige sucks)
Tyan Thunder 2500
2* 256 MB 133 Registered SDRAM
2* PIII 800 Mhz 133 FSB
2* Maxtor DiamondMax40 Plus (40 Gb each, 7200 rpm)
Elsa Gloria II AGP + Iiyama Pro 510 22"
Guillemot TNT2 M64 32mb PCI + Relisys 19"
Kenwood TrueX 72 cdrom
Plextor 12-10-32 cdrw
SB Live + 720Watt Philips speakers+subwoofer
HP Deskjet 1220 A3 printer
Agfa Duoscan T1200
Wacom Intuos A4 tablet
Logitech Wireless Mouse + Keyboard (really nice: I can control my pc from a distance of 8 meters...)
 
kvd, thanks for all the information 🙂 I hope this can make some good reference reading for other members of this forum who are planning to go the SMP way 🙂
 
Dieselman,

-- begin shameless plug --
for anyone thinking to go SMP, I strongly advise the forums on 2cpu.com. Lots of information on anything SMP-related (most discussions focus on specific smp-boards, processors (celeron, PII/III, Xeon), video-cards, overclocking, scsi).
People are generally willing to help (though there aren't much Thunder 2500 owners, but then again: I think only a few 100 boards found their way to the DIY-market) and they don't tend to brag too much (as in 'My duallie is bigger than yours...').
-- end shameless plug --

As for the Tyan-motherboards: there is a usenet-group that contains some interesting postings on their smp-boards (alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan). The best way to find information about a specific board is to search the archives through sites like Deja.com.

It would be nice though if hardware-sites (!hint, Anand...)would give the SMP-products a bit more attention (there isn't too much information on SMP on the internet, and these things are generally harder to configure than single processor systems). 😉
 
I agree with you. And that's why 2cpu.com is there for us (hopefully anandtech members will catch up on SMP soon - and it'd be VERY NICE if Anand did a round up of all the Pentium3 Dual mobos available (not just BX or 133A, but also ServerWorks). 🙂
 
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