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Tiger MP Dual-Processor Motherboard

Posted by michael on from the double-the-pleasure dept.

CtrlPhreak writes: "Anandtech has posted a review of an affordable AMD 760 based motherboard, the Tyan Tiger MP. It's basically the Tyan Thunder K7 without all the integration. For $220, it's a great deal. It has the exact same performance as the Thunder, and it is tested to run fine with those cheap and fast 1ghz durons. They say Tyan is putting out this board to compete with other offerings of a cheap 760 platform, we can only hope."

10 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Don't get this one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Tiger MP is a sweet mobo. However, AMD will be coming out with a new MP chipset called the 760MPX. The MPX has two distinct improvements. First, registered DDR RAM will not be necessary. Any old DDR RAM will do. Secondly, the MPX will support 66Mhz 64-bit PCI slots.

  2. ASUS and MSI first 760MPX motherboards by geekwin · · Score: 5, Informative

    We have photographs of the new Asus and MSI 760MPX mobos.

  3. And this one uses a standard PS by greenfly · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nice thing about this board in comparison with Tyan's other AMD MP offerings is the fact that you can use a standard ATX power supply. Tyan's previous boards required that you purchase a proprietary 450W power supply. They recommend at least 300W, though. I'm running one of these right now with a single 1.2 Palomino on the 300W PS that came with my In-Win Q500N with no problems as of yet. While it can handle a standard power supply now, Tyan still recommends that you use Registered PC2100 RAM for it. I was able to find 256M for around $50 or so.

    I recommend Einux Systems if you are looking for a place to purchase a motherboard processor combo for this board.

    Before this board came out I was going to go for a dual PIII 1Ghz system, but since that type of processor is always going to stay at 1Ghz, I figured it was worth the extra money to be able to upgrade this board to wherever the Palomino chipset ends up (from what I've heard it the chipset should be able to scale up to 2Ghz or so).

    There are supposed to be other boards released by Abit, MSI, etc. in the next month or two that will be even cheaper, but if you are like me and couldn't wait (and aren't planning on overclocking your system) then this board is a good choice.

  4. Tyan 2460, nice but picky by MadCow42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I ordered one of these a few weeks ago, and unfortunately it arrived "Dead On Arrival".

    I've been talking to a lot of other 2460 owners, and everyone is impressed, but everyone agrees that it can also be a very picky board.

    There's been many reports of memory related problems, specifically with some brands of memory. The consensus so far is that Corsair memory has been the most reliable.

    Once it's up an running though, there's been nothing but raving reviews.

    MadCow... anxiously awaiting my replacement mobo...

    --
    I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
  5. Registered DDR is not a handicap. by Shivetya · · Score: 5, Informative

    256Mb dimms are only $7.00 dollars more than their unregistered brethern. Checking crucial's site confirmed the cost really is not an issue

    This looks the motherboard I was waiting for, as I don't need all the bells the previous offering had, let alone the price tag.

    Granted a 64bit/66mhz bus chipset is coming out, but for those to whom this board appeals to most likely won't need the 66mhz PCI.

    --
    * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
  6. (Athlon-Heatsink) = Toast by SexPig · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've used AMD processors and would've bought AMD when I upgraded my machine 5 mos ago if the SMP capabilities were there but I'm not so certain now after the Tom's Hardware review. In the review (posted on /.) it demonstrated heatsinks being removed from the CPU while in operation. Both the PIII & PIV survived but the Athlons fried up with one taking the motherboard with it.

    I think we all use Linux for it's across the board stability so why not apply those high expectations to the hardware we put in those boxes? I for one think that I may not be purchasing AMD until they address the fact that the heat monitoring system that works for a fan-failure should also work for aa heatsink begin dislodged. Else you may find yourself out the $$ for a processor as well as the cost of your kick-ass Tyan mobo.

    --
    "...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
  7. Mounting Heatsinks by doorbot.com · · Score: 5, Informative

    Note that the Tiger MP has problems with larger heatsinks due to the layout of the PCB. Check the Anandtech article for more info.

    One other problem that the Anandtech article didn't mention is that the board does not have the four mounting holes around the processor sockets (like the P4s all have, and many AMD have). So forget about the latest Swiftech and Alpha heatsinks which require those holes.

    Perhaps Tyan decided to omit the holes because there wasn't room anyways... the heatsinks that mount via screws tend to be bigger and may not have fit properly anyways. At the same time, I do like the mounting holes as I feel a lot safer when my heatsink is screwed onto the motherboard -- I don't want it popping off and allowing my processor to burn itself up.

    1. Re:Mounting Heatsinks by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 4, Informative
      I dislike the "bigger + louder is better" notion in the do-it-yourself computer hardware community. I think this idea has been planted by the same people who drive Camaros and Mustangs :) Seriously, there is NO reason to get a huge brick of a heatsink for these new Athlons. What is needed is a heatsink and fan combination designed by actual engineers from an actual engineering company, like, for example, Hewlett Packard. Look, here's one:

      Agilent ArctiCooler HACA-0002

      The Agilent cooler is small so it presents no mounting problems. It is very light, so it won't shear the socket off your mainboard. It is quiet, so it won't drive your wife/husband/parents/kids/dog/cat/neighbors berserk. Best of all, it cools the 1.4 GHz Athlon better than any other cooler around, including those enormous bricks with 8500 RPM fans.

  8. Re:Inform me. by greenfly · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Palomino chipset has some MP optimizations, and is officially supported by AMD for MP use. The older processors will work, but don't perform as well in the benchmarks I've seen. The Anandtech review states that they were able to use the old Athlon chipset in this board too. I'm thinking that when they built their old chip they allowed SMP, but they didn't optimize for it (or perhaps there were other issues with the chip that we don't know about) and so they released a new chipset once the MP boards were ready that was optimized for it.

    So, yeah, you can use the old Athlons in your Tyan 2460, but if you really want the performance, you'll want to go with their Palomino core. As a added benefit, the Palomino is supposed to run cooler too.

  9. My experience with this board by pben+harris · · Score: 5, Informative
    I plunked down my $250 and waited three weeks to get this board. IMHO it was worth the wait! The system has been entirely stable, dual booting both Red Hat 7.1 and Win2k. I use it for video processing and it's a workhorse. I can encode DVD quality MPEG-2's from DV source in practically real-time, with motion search filtering and a high bit rate for output.

    However I tried to triple boot with Windows 98 so I can use a cheap video grabber card--my advice is DON'T EVEN TRY to install Win98 on this board. Mine installed fine but would not boot Win98.

    Placing the heatsink/fans on the CPUs was kind of tricky. I had 2mm of clearance between my heatsink/fan of choice and the single row of capacitors on the board. If the caps didn't wiggle I wouldn't have been able to install the heatsink/fans.

    I found humor on the inside cover of the manual. I was pleased to see in print that this motherboard is certified for *both* Win2k and RH 7.1. However that textual note was marked with an asterisk to the effect:

    This Tyan board is fully supported by Red Hat 7.1; however Tyan is not responsible if Red Hat no longer continues to support Red Hat 7.1.
    Hello Tyan! I believe Microsoft will stop meaningful support of Win2k long before that RH would stop meaningful support of RH 7.1. More info about that assertion here, here and here.

    Also, a warning. If you choose to install 1 Gb or so of ECC, registered memory, then booting takes a long time. There's some kind of POST that occurs for this kind of memory that delays my boot by like 30 seconds.

    Finally, I just want to say that SMP is no magic bullet. For my purposes this board is fabulous. But in fact, some applications run more slowly on a dual CPU system. For example, any given single threaded program (read: first person shooter) will take a hit, say 2-5% of its speed. Your application has to use multiple threads to take advantage of this environment. Of course you can run more processes, that's nice.

    You can judge for yourself if this is a good board for you. Look at the reviews for the Tyan Thunder K7, I feel they apply to the Tiger when it comes to processor performance. You can find review for that board here and here