Tyan Thunder X Dual Xeon 440GX

The Bad

Pretty much any Xeon board is going to have special chassis requirements and the Thunder X is no exception. Don't even think of using an el cheapo ATX case. First off, this is a monstrous board that uses the extended ATX format and measures 12"x13". So it won't even fit in most cases. Second, the Slot-2 retention mechanism requires a couple extra mounting holes from the chassis to motherboard.

Unlike Tyan's dual Pentium II board, the Thunder 100 DLUAN, the Thunder X does not include a RAID port or on board ethernet or sound. The RAID port could come in handy for some seriously fast disk performance if it becomes necessary. Since there are 6 PCI slots, on board ethernet and sound are not a major loss, but ethernet will probably be needed in just about every situation this board while find itself.

USB support can be completely disabled, but there is no way to leave it enabled while disabling the IRQ it takes up. This feature is pretty much standard now on most motherboards featuring the Award BIOS.

While non-overclocked stability was pretty good, it was not quite as good as that of the Supermicro S2DGU. Since the Thunder X seems to have excellent construction, this could be due to the lack of a terminator card for the second CPU slot.

Overclocking is pretty much out of the question with the Thunder X. It would not even complete POST at 112MHz and locked up right before it started to boot from the hard drive. Of course, overclocking is not common in the high-end environment that this board is intended for.

Finally, this board is expensive! Of course, this is to be expected since it is a dual processor, Slot-2 440GX board with on board dual channel Ultra 2 LVD SCSI. I don't think you'll be finding a similar board for less. Further, the cost of onboard Adaptec SCSI is on the rise recently, so maybe it is not such a bad deal after all.

USB Compatibility

• Number of Front Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 0

• Number of Rear Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: No

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man SEC -GH PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 128MB PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.com

Manufacturer: Mushkin
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business and High End Winstone 99 were run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color