Intel's E7205: Granite Bay Hits the Streets
by Evan Lieb on November 18, 2002 9:56 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Final Words
There's a lot to say about Intel's latest chipset, the E7205. Let's first start out by looking at each motherboard's qualities.
Firstly, Tyan's S2662 motherboard is quite good for the audience it's targeted at, which are users that simply want a fast, stable solution (and therefore no overclocking) in addition to a standard feature set, which lacks all the bells and whistles of other products. So, even though it's more popular to be a tweaker or overclocker in the DIY market nowadays, there are still a large group of DIYers that desire motherboards that are reliable at stock speeds. Therefore, it's easy to see that Tyan's S2662 motherboard fills a considerable niche very well, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this motherboard isn't for overclockers, tweakers, or users looking for an all-in-one solution.
ASUS's P4G8X is able to fill a couple of markets. The P4G8X will primarily attract tweakers and overclockers first and foremost. The P4G8X BIOS contains very flexible FSB and voltage adjustments, in addition to being an overclockable motherboard. Memory tweaking is quite good, and in general should attract lots of performance-minded DIYers. However, those aren't the only users the ASUS P4G8X will attract. Users looking at purchasing an all-in-one solution will love the P4G8X; Serial ATA RAID, Gigabit LAN, sound, FireWire, USB 2.0, and a dual channel chipset are excellent features for users that need as much as possible on a motherboard. VGA is just about the only thing missing from the P4G8X that all-in-one minded users might need. Though the price will initially be steep ($190), this is to be expected with a dual channel chipset, especially one from Intel. Prices will fall though, and we expect motherboards like the P4G8X to get as low as $140 in the next couple of months.
Gigabyte's 8INXP is in a very similar situation to the P4G8X. There will be a good deal of tweakers and overclockers that will purchase the 8INXP due to its flexible voltage and FSB options, not to mention its exceptional overclocking ability. Again, like the P4G8X, the 8INXP will attract the user looking for a fully integrated motherboard with the very latest technologies. Remember, the 8INXP comes with Serial ATA RAID, Promise IDE RAID, Gigabit LAN, sound, USB 2.0, and, of course, Intel's dual channel E7205 chipset. As far as RAID goes, Gigabyte's board would be a much better choice than ASUS's P4G8X, since the 8INXP comes with onboard IDE RAID. However, the 8INXP lacks FireWire, while the P4G8X does not. This makes it a tough decision for DIYers looking for that all-in-one wonder. However, what might give Gigabyte's board the edge over the P4G8X is its DPS technology (which enables 6-phase voltage circuitry) and dual BIOS. These are unique features the P4G8X lacks, and which can be useful to certain people. In addition, this solution is expected to be less expensive than the P4G8X by about $15.
So, what else can we say at this point? Clearly, Granite Bay is the highest performing P4 DDR chipset currently available on the market. However, the 850E plus dual channel PC1066 memory is still just as fast as Granite Bay. In addition, it looks as if the price of an 850E motherboard and two PC1066 sticks of memory compared to an E7205 motherboard plus two DDR266 sticks of memory will be roughly the same. Since this is the case, what's the advantage of a Granite Bay motherboard? Well, as is clear from our overclocked benchmarks, Granite Bay motherboards perform the best while overclocked, clearly due to the higher peak bandwidth dual channel memory offers. But is Granite Bay's overclocked performance leadership over 845PE worth the initial premium Granite Bay will sell for in addition to the extra stick of memory you must purchase? For some no, and for others yes.
Well, we hope you enjoyed our coverage of Intel's E7205 (Granite Bay) chipset. Stay tuned for more exciting things to come this week at Comdex…
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hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Regarding previous comment:And I told this thing to show e-mail address. hrumsey@charter.net if anyone has questions.
It also removed paragraph indents that would make the above post a bit more readable- apologies.
And a clarification: The ZCR card could be seen to be flashed only because a jumper change is needed to put them in flash mode. In normal mode, the Thunder K8S Pro S2882 BIOS was squashing the Adaptec 2010S / 2015S BIOS.
Damn, I hope Google indexes that comment well.
Speaking of which, for you-know-who:
Tyan Thunder K8S Pro Adaptec 2010S 2015S ZCR RAID BIOS problem incompatibility bug hang failure download flash PCI-X
Tyan 2882 K8S Pro Thunder ZCR Adaptec 2015S 2010S RAID bug hang failure problem incompatibility PCI-X flash BIOS download
Thunder Tyan 2882 K8S Pro ZCR Adaptec RAID 2010S 2015S BIOS incompatibility problem failure hang PCI-X BIOS bug flash download
wildly incompetent screen-reading technical support monkeys
beta-testing on customers
See previous comment
hrumsey - Friday, January 7, 2005 - link
Anandtech's evaluation covers how good Tyan's tech support is in the absence of any real problem for them to deal with. I would suggest that this is not an adequate criterion.Our experiences were different.
The issue of product quality is relevant here, since it makes the quality of technical support more important if the product is poor. My company tried Tyan boards several years ago, and gave up when along with 4 DOAs, 3 quick in-service failures gave a defective rate of almost 50%. I mistakenly thought almost 10 years would be enough for the company to straighten out.
We ordered 3 Thunder Pro S2882s for a client taking a website inhouse who wanted a 64-bit option- this was before Intel's 64-bit Xeons showed up.
All of the following happened under time pressure, which isn't unusual, and why better support than Tyan's is necessary:
One of the three boards was DOA; wouldn't flash any of three Adaptec 2010S ZCR cards; the other two would. Tyan's tech support essentially kept assuming we were doing something wrong and, and at one point asked if we had the current BIOS on the ZCR cards. They must not have any sort of decent database, since the problem had to be explained anew every call. After they admitted the board was bad, they failed to warn us of their shipping deadline for replacing the board (which they will do, and with an E. Coast vendor and them in CA was necessary).
All the boards failed to see the ZCR cards. First tech said that couldn't be happening, second knew about the problem and said the "E" BIOS fixed it. It didn't. We delivered servers with drives unmirrored.
Site setup was busy for a while. When I finally had a chance to work on ZCR problem, Tyan could find no record of the problem (none of the emails we exchanged except ones I sent had case #s in the header). I explained everything again, and once again had to assure them again that we'd gotten the obvious stuff right. First tech said he didn't know how it could be happening, and thought I was missing something. Got email next day from supervisor acknowledging there was a problem and saying (again) they had a new BIOS out that would fix the problem. Downloaded, sent tech onsite to install. Didn't work, same result- ZCR card option grayed out in BIOS, system hangs. When I had a chance to go down and work on it personally, once again, no record of case. I went through everything from scratch once more, assuring them that yes, we'd read the FAQs and yes, the system was plugged in, and yes, we had tried every possible combination of their two blasted relevant jumpers, and that in fact there were about eight other germane parameters we had tried which none of them had thought of- and all of this while wasting valuable onsite time. When I finally convinced them that 1) we were competent and 2) it wasn't working, I was told I'd get a call back "shortly" from the responsible engineer. Three hours later, in a darkened factory, at 5:14:55 just as I was leaving, I got a call back from the engineer who actually knew what was going on. He finally admitted we had everything right. He had no solution, but agreed with my suggestion for testing and said he'd check- he lacked authority(!)- to see if management would authorize the replacement board I'd been asking for. And they did, but there shouldn't have been any question.
Next trip down I replaced the board in one server, picking the server in whichhe Gigabit Ethernet ports had failed- and it still didn't #$%^& work. Tyan said it had been working the day before for them with a 2010S ZCR card, and until today, I didn't know whether they were lying or not. I cussed some and ordered $1200 worth of controllers to replace what Tyan couldn't get right 5 months after the product's release.
Today I checked and saw that they have a new BIOS for the board available that "Fixes PCI ZCR card hangs system during POST". It's the third BIOS for which they've made that claim, and you know, it really doesn't matter whether they're right this time or not. And if they're not, it doesn't matter whether they're just mistaken or actually lying- theend result is the same.
We saw five of their high-end server boards. One DOA, one in-service failure, all five with a major design flaw. Eight years is enough time to take care of company-wide failures. Any company that will release a $500 server board with a 40% failure rate, and without first ensuring that everything on it actually works, and who then can't tell for five months whether or not they've fixed the resulting problems, and whose tech support is staffed with folks who can't deal those problems- well, that's a company whose products you want to steer very clear of.