Monday, March 13, 2000

The performance tests results

All tests were all performed under Windows98.

The system setup was as following:

Motherboard: Tyan Trinity 400 S1854
BIOS version: 1.06
CPU: Intel Pentium III Coppermine 500E FC-PGA
Memory: 128Mb of Transcend PC133 SDram
IDE Primary port master: Quantum Fireball KA 9.1gig UDMA66
IDE Primary port slave: none
IDE secondary port master: Quantum Fireball EIDE ST 3.2A
IDE secondary port slave: Kenwood 52X True X
AGP port: ATI Rage Fury 128GL
Graphic card drivers: 4.11.6107
OS: Win98 4.10
DirectX 6.1

Winstone99 - Winbench99

Video sub-system tests

Unfortunately, this motherboard has proven to be highly refractory to Overclocking. As a fact, all I could benefit of while Overclocking was a mere 560Mhz by using a FSB of 122Mhz with a multiplier of 5X. Using the same processor I could get as high as 667Mhz on some other similar motherboards with a FSB of 133Mhzx and a multiplier of 5X. As I was believing that the problems preventing a good Overclocking could have been caused by the ATI Rage Fury 128 GL graphic card that I was using, I swapped the graphic card for an Abit GF256 Siluro but the problems worsen. With the GF256, I had to lower the FSB to 100Mhz and clock the processor to its fundamental operating frequency of 500Mhz.

Disk sub-system tests

The evaluation table below shows both the strong and weak points of the tested motherboard. No need to remind you that performance is not the sole purchasing criteria in a motherboard. Most of today's motherboards exhibit performance very close to each other, so we need additional information in order to help us distinguish the real advantages of a motherboard compared to its competitors. This is exactly where this evaluation table comes in handy.

The weak points

The S1854's weak points are: ISA & hardware monitoring offered only as options, and the absence of a CPU voltage control within the BIOS. Note that I was also forced to subtract some points for the Overclocking and stability tests, due to the hardware problems I encountered while testing. So, I was stuck in the position of not deducting too many points because of this, but neither could I ignore it. Hopefully, the final score will be corrected when I receive a replacement board.

The strong points

THe S1854's's strong point's are: Excellent performance, a nice set of features, an integrated sound card, support for 4X AGP, and a very thorough user's manual.

Conclusions

The Tyan Trinity 400 S1854 motherboard was looking as a promising motherboard at first glance. However, with the very poor Overclocking results I had with it, I was quickly left with a sour taste in the mouth even if this motherboards is really interesting as far the processor supported diversity as well as its features richness. On the other hand, I am very highly suspecting some internal problems only affecting the sample I had for testing because several other web sites reported very good Overclocking results with this board. Thus, I can't personally recommend the S1854 but I am inviting you to read as much reviews as possible about this motherboard before to take your final decision.

For more information, visit Tyan.

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