Tyan S1590S Trinity 100AT Super 7 Motherboard
Reviewed by Poh Leng Wee (10/09/98)

<Introduction><The Good><The Test><The Bad><Conclusion><Rating>

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Introduction

Tyan is one of the well known mainboard manufacturer in the world. It prides itself on designing their board in the USA and making high quality and reliable products. However, in Singapore, Tyan has slightly lost it's appeal to DIY people due to the fact that it costs more than other taiwanese competitors. However, will this particular Super 7 board be an exception? We will have to wait and see.

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The Good

The first impression that I got when I saw this board was that there are a lot of slots. There are altogether 4 PCI/ 4 ISA/ 1AGP slots. This could be very useful for people who need lots of expansion slots. However, I felt that it is an overkill for ISA slot as the trend today is towards PCI slots.

Like other Super 7 mainboard, this board provides the user with different jumpers to change the VCore voltage, the CPU multiplier, the CPU clock speed and the memory clock speed. However, Tyan manages to arrange this jumpers in a very neat way so that it is simple to make changes to the settings. Besides easy access to jumpers, setting up of this board is also troublefree and simple. Hence, I would strongly recommend beginners who are not too sure about Super 7 board to use this particular board.

Another point to note is that this board provides a 95Mhz bus speed which is required for the AMD K6-2 333.

The Intel i740 chipset is also supported by this board as it is using the CE version of the MVP3 chipset.

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The Test

The test was conducted with two AMD chips, the K6-2 333 and K6-2 350. Different CPU bus speed was tested.

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 333 Mhz @ 3.5 x 95 Mhz

Wintune 98 Result for AMD K6-2 350 Mhz @ 3.5 x 100 Mhz

Besides running both chips at their recommended setting, I also tested out other possible settings which includes overclocking the chips. I discovered that the K6-2 333 was not really  overclockable while the K6-2 350 performs better in overclocking. However, a point to note is that this board only provides the user with a 2.2V CPU voltage setting (no 2.3V, 2.4V, 2.5V and 2.6V settings available). So all the different settings for the two chip are all ran at 2.2V. The results are all shown below. Take note that the graphics card settings is the same as the above test.

Brief Summary of Overclocking/Alternative Settings
of K6-2 333 and K6-2 350 Mhz
(Using a large heatsink/fan)

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The Bad

First point to note is that this board requires a eight slot casing. This is because the AGP slot is located at the eighth slot. Hence, users buying this board have to take note of the number of slots in their casing.

Another point is that fixing on and taking off of the CPU cooling fan is pretty troublesome as the capacitors on the board are build too close to the socket 7 nose use by the buckets of the fan. Any fan which have big buckets would be unable to fit into the socket 7 nose.

Lastly, like all Tyan boards, this board is build for stability. Hence, the defacto guideline of a maximum of 100Mhz bus speed is supported only. Users who would like to overclock or test out higher bus speed will be unable to do so. The number of VCore voltage selection is also pretty limited. Hence, this board is not a very good option for overclocking.

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Conclusion

Tyan has once again produce a board that is reliable and stable. Although the design of the board is still not perfect, this Super 7 board is one of the least troublesome board to set up due to the small number of jumpers. Hence, users who are looking forward to a Super 7 board that is reliable, stable and easy to set up should seriously consider the Tyan S1590S Trinity 100AT. Lastly, for hardcore overclockers, I feel that they should give this board a miss as it is build for stability and not for overclocking purposes.

MOTHERBOARD RATING

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