DUAL CPU Motherboard recommendations

[X-Caliber]

Hi,

I was planning to get a TYAN 230T board to replace my ASUS P2B-DS, so I could run DUAL TUALATINs. I was wondering, what are your impressions of this board. I have scanned through a bunch of posts here, and it appears that TYAN does not allow you to overclock. It also seems that most of the videocard issues have been resolved, is this true (can I run at 4x)? I have read about people having problems with TV Tuner cards, any more info? How is the VIA chipset? Are there any stability issues I should be aware of. I do plan to run the AGP port at 4x, with a Matrox Parhelia. Anyone try this? How does this board compare with the MSI 694D and the Supermicro P3TDDE? Finally, will I see a big performance increase if I move from DUAL 1.1GHZ CPUs @ 100MHZ to DUAL (TUALATIN) 1.2GHZ CPUS @ 133MHZ FSB ? How about 1.4GHZ Tualatins? Do you guys think I am better off with my P2B-DS board (REV 1.06 D03)? Strangely enough, my board sells for around $150 on eBay, while the TYAN goes for around ~$50 (used for both).

If you have any other motherboard recommendations, for dual CPUs, please let me know as well. I also have no experience with the AMD stuff, so if there is a board you could recommend, I would gladly take a look at it!!

Please send me your thoughts!

-V-

[MultimediaMan]

There is a good reason the 230T sells for $50 bucks... it is a Via KT133-based board.

The only Tuallies that support SMP are the 512KB Cache Versions, so beware.

256K Coppermines are all SMP-enabled.

The Supermicro boards all require Registered ECC RAM, but those a NIIIICE boards.

Anything based on the Serverworks chipsets will work fine, WILL require Registered ECC, and WILL give you "less than perfect" AGP support.

Now, the AMD boards and RAM are starting to get cheap enough for the budget SMP'r, and complete AMD Duallies can be had for a fairly low TCO.

Figure about $180 for a board and ~$100 to 200 for a pair of mid-line (~1200MHz-1800MHz) MP processors. However, Parhelia Support on the Newer 760MPX chipset is hit or miss. Chainetechs work, Tyans do not, Gigabyte do with the Latest BIOS.

I just finished a new fileserver for my home network with a Tyan S2460 (TigerMP) for a total cash outlay of $815...this was the motherboard, two MP1200 processors, 1GB Registered ECC RAM, 2x 40GB HDDs, 2x 80GB HDDs, a 4 Channel IDE RAID card, a DVD-ROM, a pair of Copper heatsinks, 6 Cooling Fans and a 450 Watt Antec PSU.

The only thing that wasn't figured into the price was an el-cheapo Dynapower Metis case that may yet give way to a Swanky Kingwin.

This thing replaced my Dual P3 600 Tyan Thunderbolt that sounded like a cyclone everytime I fired it up.

[X-Caliber]

Thanks for the reply! Quick Question, what's so bad about the VIA KT133 chipset? I have heard bad things about VIA in general, but is there anything wrong with this chipset? Also, don't all AMD boards use a VIA chipset? Will the Parhelia run @ 4x on the TYAN S230T?? Specifically, which AMD board did you buy?

Thanks!

-V-

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
This thing replaced my Dual P3 600 Tyan Thunderbolt that sounded like a cyclone everytime I fired it up.

LOL guess who else is still running this same board/CPUs?

The Thunderbolt was/is a pretty damned good board. I bought it for the built-in dual channel SCSI and the dual slot 1 GX chipset and it's been stable as a rock for 4 years now. Don't know how Tyan rates currently, but I built a few systems with them back then and had pretty good experiences with them (of course that was with GX/BX chipsets.)

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by X-Caliber
Thanks for the reply! Quick Question, what's so bad about the VIA KT133 chipset? I have heard bad things about VIA in general, but is there anything wrong with this chipset? Also, don't all AMD boards use a VIA chipset? Will the Parhelia run @ 4x on the TYAN S230T?? Specifically, which AMD board did you buy?

Thanks!

-V-

It's simply not a stable chipset. I have the VIA KT133A chipset and I experience random problems every now and then. It's bearable because my system is for porn use, er I mean personal use only.

[MultimediaMan]

The T-Bolt will still soldier on...just not as my primary file server.

This is one of the finest board's I've ever had the pleasure of using.

I am amazed at how sorted out the Tyan S2460 is...6 Monitored Fan headers, Full SMBus support, etc....

Too bad the 2466 wasn't as good...but the Thunder K7X more than makes up for it...but it it a much more expensive board.

[Belwarrior]

I am using a KT133 (nonA) chipset based Asus A7V.. my advice is not to get any board based on this chipset. I am okay with the random problems that crop.. as most my data is backed up and is quite fun when trying to troubleshoot (eg, my movies pauses every few seconds [avg 40secs] my hdd is ata133 while the KT133 supports up to only ata66) i find it is better to fix the irq per pci slot than to let it be auto... etc) U get the idea.

I'm sure the guys here could recommend a much better mainboard for your budget erm.. what is your budget anyway?

sidenote : since i can afford to wait.. i am saving for a dual Amd Opteron board and for Parhelia II

[Gurm]

KT133* is arguably one of the least stable chipsets ever produced.

Gpar_

[X-Caliber]

Is the KT133 chipset used on AMDs boards the same as the Pro133T used on the TYAN 230T???

[MultimediaMan]

Yes...

[Paddy]

I am more than happy with my A7M266-D

[a_h]

Are you guys all gone nuts?

I own a Tyan 230T with the latest chipset-revision, I use 2 Tualatin-S 1.4 GHz with 1 GB Ram and I have 0 problems. Bought that combo last november and use it since as a workstation (physical simulations) and as a server - nadda problems.

Maybe you all use some old revision of the ApolloPro-chipset, maybe you remember the scandal with the Soundblaster-cards (data loss occured when the southbridge of the KT133A=VT82C686B was used together with the soundblaster), but I cannot talk about ANY problems, because I don't have any. Since I use an Audigy too, I should be the perfect candidate for having data loss issues.

In fact I use WinXP-sp1 since november and had until april NOT even ONE system hang. But then I tried to use TV-Tool, and that prog killed my machine so often...

What else is done with my rig? Watching tv per tuner-card, playing games, listening to mp3s, some hours lasting physical simulations, some programming, some p2p...NO problems AT ALL.

In fact, the Kt133T was a sensational chipset, just think of bank interleaving or the agressive memory timings, it was the fastest chipset in that time, it has even beaten the K266...

Besides: the K266-chipset isn't of any use for the PIII, because the PIII cannot make use of the enhanced bandwidth.

Besides2: the KT133T is not the northbridge of the tyan board, it's the VT82C694T, also ApolloPro 133T called. The problem was originally caused by the southbridge VT82C686B.

It wasn't a via-bug, it had to do with the aggressive pci-latency of the soundblaster cards, so you could relax the pci-latency time in the bios and the problem was gone. However via released a patch and incorporated it later in their hyperion/4-in-1s.

Personally I can only recommend the Tyan Tiger 230T, for me no other rig has worked so well.

http://www.tyan.com.tw/products/html/tiger230t.html

[a_h]

PS: my Parhelia should arrive this week, then I can tell you more about AGP4x. At present I use a Geforce2 (pci-version).

I like this board, because it hasn't any additional crap on it, like onboard lan or even worse onboard sound.

The serverworks chipsets are pretty good, but aren't of any use for the home user - how many 66MHz/64Bit cards do you have? Do you like integrated SCSI? I personally don't; I prefer having a seperate card I can use in other rigs too.

However: dual tualatins are a dream to build a silent rig. My machine is really silent and I like having power AND silence.

I considered a dual AMD-rig, but they draw too much power, I even remember problems with the 760MP tyan board. It had only one mainboard-power connector, so the whole wattages had to go through it - the connector heated up to a point where it melted (check the 2cpu-forums for that).

However I don't know how to cool such a rig silently (water cooling? kryostat? Peltier? Compressor?), since it emits about 150W thermal power. ECC-Ram is fairly slow too and expensive.
AMD MPs are expensive and have at present not even the Thoroughbred-B core (not to mention the Barton-core).

There's only one advantage: you can use the 760MP-chipset with unlocked Athlon-XPs, but that chipset isn't that great...The 760MPX allows only MPs.

[MultimediaMan]

a_h... check out the miserable PCI bandwidth most VIAs suffer before evangelizing that chipset.

Most VIA chipsets, up to and including the KT333 could only push 50-70MB/Sec across their PCI bus on their best day. Most Intels will do well past 90MB/Sec. If memory serves, it all hinged around how many instructions they could execute before going to the CPU...the VIAs could do only 8 instructions, while Intel Chipsets from the 430TX to the present do 1024.

The 760MP Chipset is a good chipset, and it is true that the ATX connectors on some of the Tyan Tiger S2460's sometimes burned, but these were on rev 1.01 Boards...Rev 1.03 boards seem to be much better about that (mine is a 1.03). Most problems were traced to suspect PSUs and poor connections.

The root of the problem was not so much excessive power draw in terms raw wattage, but more poor planning for how that power was obtained from the PSU: Tyan built the board to where the +5V rail was running both CPUs... The Thunder K7 S2462 boards and subsequent 760MPX boards have the CPUs powered by the +12V Rail via a regulator, etc...

PC2100 Registered ECC DDR blows away PC133 SDRAM in Latency and raw bandwidth, and let's not forget that you DON'T have to enable ECC Checking or Scrubbing.

Check your facts: Thoroughbred Bs AND Barton Core MPs are out in circulation. MP2000 to MP2400s can be B revisions. MP2600+ ARE Bartons, but only running at a 266MHz FSB.

Regarding the the 760MP vs. the 760MPX chipsets, the 760MP has a far superior 33MHz bus implementation. It's true that the 760MPX offers a seperate 64Bit/66MHz bus, but the 32Bit/33MHz bus is nearly as bad as an older VIA. Latency is very good, but overall throughput of the 33MHz Bus is fairly low.

[Kurt]

@all: You keep on talking about KTxxx chipsets with respect to Intel CPUs but they are NOT compatible.

Kxxx chipsets from VIA are for AMD chips.

The Apollo Pro series from VIA will run your Intel chips. The latest one being the 694D (D for Dual) with the 686B southbridge.

VIA keep on having problems with their drivers and chipsets, so why not go for an Intel dually? Tyan and Supermicro make superlative boards but be aware they're not for OCing and they cost more then your usual brand. They might also have some VIA or Serverworks boards...