Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/830



One of the most difficult tasks we have at AnandTech is presenting you with the most complete information for you to base your buying decisions upon.  Often times we know about products that will be released months in advance, but are under strict non-disclosure agreements not to reveal such information.  The reasons are obvious; manufacturers don't want their competition learning about a product too early (although they do find out through OEM contacts quite easily).  They also don't want to kill off sales on shipping products by letting everyone know that a superior product is on its way.  Needless to say it puts us in a very difficult position because we want to give you the most complete information but aren't always able to tell you everything (we do leave clues here and there though…).

A fairly recent example (there are some that are even more recent however) was the release of Tyan's Thunder K7; the world's first dual processor Socket-A motherboard.  We originally wrote about this board back in June, at the start of Computex.  The performance was spectacular, even besting that of a dual 1.7GHz Intel Xeon system.  While the performance of the board was mainly due to the chipset and the CPUs, Tyan had the exclusive on the solution and could thus reap the benefit's of AMD's engineering.  Tyan is no rookie when it comes to making this sort of a motherboard either; there are very few manufacturers that we'd trust to produce such a complicated motherboard design to be used in a mission critical server environment.  The only real downside to the workstation users on a budget was the incredible price of the Thunder K7.  Initially retailing at over $700, the Thunder K7 was far from affordable.  The performance was worth it to some, but to others the price was simply too high. 

By this time however, we already knew that help was on the way.  Tyan had already thought of and designed a much cheaper solution.  This board would be born without the onboard Ethernet controllers, sound and video; even more importantly, without the incredible power supply requirements.  In spite of the showings at Computex, Tyan knew that no other manufacturer would be able to produce a dual Socket-A motherboard before Q4 of 2001.  So they did what any competitive company would do; they allowed their expensive flagship to reign king for a couple of months, and then introduced a cheaper follow-up to tailor to the rest of the market. 

The cheaper follow-up is here and it's the little brother to Tyan's Thunder K7.  It's time to introduce the Tiger MP.



Proprietary Standards: No one really likes them

As impressive as the Tyan Thunder K7 was, it was clear that the board would not take the Athlon MP processor and 760MP chipset mainstream.  In fact, it wouldn't even make a dent in Intel's stronghold on the dual processor (2P) workstation and server markets.  The board and platform in general was deemed interesting by companies like Hewlett Packard, but those very same companies went on to produce 2P Xeon systems and not Athlon MP solutions.  Obviously there are other factors that play into decisions like that, but the Thunder K7 did play its share of roles.

One of the biggest problems over the assimilation of the Thunder K7 into many commercial systems and even among enthusiasts was the very unique power supply requirement.  The 450 – 460W power requirement of the motherboard wasn't too unreasonable considering the market it was targeted at, but the proprietary connector was.  There isn't a single manufacturer that feels too comfortable committing to a platform that can be powered by one of three power supplies.  Even Tyan didn't approve of the use of a proprietary connector pin-out on the Thunder K7; apparently it was AMD's decision which has since been changed that caused it.


Everyone loves standardization; the Tiger MP features a standard 20-pin ATX power connector

Needless to say that the first problem the Tiger MP fixes is the requirement of a special power supply.  The board itself features an industry standard 20-pin ATX power connector with the same pinout on the thousands of other ATX motherboards out there.  Like all Socket-A motherboards, there are some stricter power delivery requirements that the power supply must meet.  The standard set of AMD recommended power supply guidelines apply as well as two additional specifications set forth by AMD and Tyan.  The +3.3V power rail must be capable of delivering at least 3A of current and the +5V power rail must deliver at least 30A of current.  The importance of these two ratings is that these lines are what supply power to the motherboard and the CPU(s).  As with most of our tests, we used a 300W Sparkle (Model Number FSP300-60GT) power supply.  This power supply met the 30A delivery requirement on the +5V rail and exceeded the 3A minimum on the +3.3V by providing 14A of current at 3.3V. 



Memory Support: The good and the bad

Very few people realize how difficult it is to implement 4 DIMM slots connected to a 64-bit DDR266 memory bus while maintaining stability.  It's not a surprise that only a handful of motherboard manufacturers have been able to accomplish such a feat.  Iwill is one of them, and of course, Tyan is as well. 

One of the requirements for the 4 DIMM slots present on the Tiger MP is that all of the modules must be registered DDR SDRAM modules.  A "registered" memory module helps to reduce loading (electrical not data load) on the memory bus by buffering address lines through registers on the modules themselves.  The end result is that more memory slots are able to be used on a motherboard.  This is actually a very common requirement for most server and high-end workstation motherboards that will be used in cases with a lot of memory.  The Tyan Thunder K7 that powers the AnandTech Forums Database server for example has all four DIMM slots filled, each with a 512MB DDR266 module.  Had larger modules been available, the board would have been filled with those instead.

The Tiger MP keeps the 4 DIMM slots of the Thunder K7 which is a good thing since efficiency in higher end applications is not only governed by CPU and platform performance, but memory size as well.  This also forces it to keep the registered DDR SDRAM requirement, but only if more than two banks are populated.  If you only install two modules then you should be fine with regular DDR SDRAM (provided that it has no specific compatibility issues with the Tiger MP).  During our tests we ran the board with Corsair Registered DDR SDRAM modules and the same Crucial unregistered DDR SDRAM we use in all of our other tests.  As long as only two slots were filled, the stability was identical and the performance was roughly the same (the unregistered modules are theoretically faster but that doesn't translate into any tangible performance gains).  When more than three unregistered DIMMs were installed the system would not POST; and adding a third registered DIMM to a set of two unregistered DIMMs would not boot either.


Registered Corsair (Top), Unregistered Crucial (Bottom) - Click to Enlarge

In order to reduce the size of the motherboard Tyan has unfortunately gone back to perpendicular DIMM slots vs. the 45 degree angled slots on the Thunder K7.  The benefit of the angled slots was that they'd work with registered DIMMs while in a 1U server chassis.  Of course if you're not looking to rackmount the motherboard then there's no reason to even worry. 



Two sockets and a heatsink

The layout of the Tiger MP isn't its strongpoint but Tyan did the best with what they were given.  The Tiger MP implements the same 760MP chipset that debuted on the Thunder K7 meaning that the architecture and performance behind the motherboard shouldn't have changed.  As we proved in the lab, the performance of the Tiger MP is indeed identical to that of the Thunder K7.  Because the same chipset is used, the Tiger MP shares the Thunder K7's shortcoming in its lack of support for 64-bit/66MHz PCI cards.  While the board features four 64-bit PCI slots, the slots only operate at 33MHz like the remaining two 32-bit slots. 

Tyan Thunder K7
Tyan Tiger MP

 

The upcoming 760MPX chipset will differ from the current 760MP only in its South Bridge that will support 64-bit/66MHz PCI.  If this matters to you because one or more of your peripherals require 64-bit/66MHz slots then you're better off waiting.  The most likely candidates for a peripheral that would require 64-bit/66MHz slots are high-end PCI graphics cards and/or RAID adapters; the added bandwidth coming in handy with RAID adapters. 

The upper right quadrant of the motherboard is by far the most complicated portion of the motherboard.  The AMD 762 North Bridge is present with the same heat spreader we saw on the first Thunder K7 motherboards (this is provided by AMD), but on top of the heat spreader is a heatsink to help remove some of the heat from the North Bridge (this is a Tyan addition).  This is the same heatsink that appears on later revisions of the Thunder K7 (all shipping revisions should have it now), and helps cool the North Bridge tremendously. 

Heatsink Attached
Heatsink Removed

 

Because of the complex nature of the chipset where each CPU gets a dedicated 64-bit EV6 bus and because of the sheer lack of space on the motherboard, the two CPU sockets are placed very close to the North Bridge.  The line of capacitors separating the two CPU sockets are very close in proximity to both sockets, making installing any of today's Socket-A heatsinks very difficult.  There is barely any room to work with, limiting the cooling options you have.  Heatsinks with large clips will be very difficult to attach; we used the older/smaller Taisol heatsinks with a single clip which worked just fine.



No bells, no whistles, but stable

From an overclocking/tweaking standpoint, the Tiger MP is definitely not a board to be tuned.  The Award/Phoenix BIOS setup is very plain and offers no control over the basic settings.  The market that the Tiger MP is targeted at has very little use for such features and thus Tyan hasn't focused on them much at all.  At the same time, Tyan does realize the strength of the enthusiast market and hopes to begin offering some more serious features for the enthusiast market in the next year; better late, than never. 

All of what made the Thunder K7 the perfect motherboard for a server (sans chipset) has now been removed from the Tiger MP.  There is no on-board SCSI controller, no on-board Ethernet controllers and no on-board sound/video.  There were plans to include an IDE RAID controller but they were scrapped for the launch of the Tiger MP. 

During our weeks of testing we never encountered a single problem with the Tiger MP, even after testing it outside of AMD's and Tyan's specifications by using Dual Athlon (Thunderbird) CPUs and Dual Duron (Morgan) CPUs.  The board works fine with all Socket-A CPUs both in single and in 2P mode.  The Tiger MP's BIOS also properly detects and enables the SSE bit on the Athlon MP and Duron.  The current revision of the BIOS even works perfectly with AMD's upcoming desktop Palomino processor in single and in 2P mode as well.

The board does allow you to select FSB frequencies using a set of four 3-pin jumpers on the motherboard, but only the 100MHz and 133MHz frequencies are documented.  By playing around with the 64 possible combinations you can arrive at some interesting FSB frequencies although none of which are out of the ordinary for a Socket-A motherboard.   As you might expect, there is no support for clock multiplier adjustment.

Our board did have one rework on it near the parallel port. The rework didn't apparently cause any stability problems but it was unusual to see on a production board. We'd expect it to be gone on shipping boards.



The Test

We first ran a quick set of benchmarks to measure the performance of the Tiger MP vs. the Thunder K7.  The performance of the two boards was identical, so we will point you back at our original AMD 760MP Review for performance stats comparing the Athlon MP in single and dual processor modes to the competition. 

For this review, we'll limit the benchmarking study to a comparison of 2P systems using Athlon MP processors and the new Duron with the Morgan core

Windows 2000 Test System

Hardware

CPU(s)

AMD Athlon MP 1.2GHz x 2
AMD Athlon MP 1.0GHz x 2
AMD Duron 1.0GHz x 2 (also used in single processor mode)
Motherboard(s) Tyan Tiger MP
Memory

512MB DDR266 Corsair Registered DDR SDRAM

Hard Drive

IBM Deskstar 30GB 75GXP 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100

CDROM

Phillips 48X

Video Card(s)

NVIDIA GeForce3 64MB DDR

Ethernet

Linksys LNE100TX 100Mbit PCI Ethernet Adapter

Software

Operating System

Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 2

Video Drivers

NVIDIA Detonator3 v12.41



Business & Content Creation Performance

We've included a SYSMark 2001 run to show the benefits of going to a 2P system for the user that doesn't necessarily run many multithreaded applications but merely uses OS level multitasking.  Running multiple applications at once is quite common and can be quite taxing, this is exactly what SYSMark 2001 shows us.

Here we see a hefty boost from going to two processors.  Content Creation applications can be very CPU intensive and performing a render function in a single application while working in another can bring a system to its knees. 

It's also interesting to note the 42% performance advantage the 2P Athlon MP 1.0GHz setup has over the 2P Duron 1GHz.  Part of this performance increase is due to the increase in FSB frequency, but a good portion of it is due to the 4x increase in L2 cache per processor. 

The performance improvement from going to a 2P system is much less when dealing with multitasking under office applications.  Here we only see a 13% improvement for the Duron

Again there's a 20% boost when going from the Duron 1GHz based on the Morgan core, to the very similar Athlon MP 1GHz based on the Palomino core. 

The overall performance increase is definitely impressive, but not outstanding.  It should be noted that in spite of the 2P Athlon MP's dominance in this test, a single 1.53GHz Athlon will be able to outperform it.  This should make the choice very clear that for users that aren't running specifically multithreaded applications or applications that would easily each take up over 75% of the CPU time of a single CPU; as cool as a 2P system may be, it's not for you.

Now onto the workstation benchmarks…



Multithreaded Workstation Application Performance

Although a part of the age old High-End Winstone 99 benchmark suite, Ziff Davis Media's Dual Processor Inspection Tests are still very useful for measuring the performance of 2P systems.

You must keep in mind however that because of the relative age of the benchmarks, the datasets being operated on are not nearly as large as today's datasets.  This gives the smaller L2 cache of the Duron a bit of a break, but you shouldn't ignore the obvious.

Here we don't see a significant benefit from going to a 2P setup in Microstation.  This is actually similar to what we've seen in other MCAD/CAD applications such as Pro/ENGINEER.  The x86 version of Pro/ENGINEER isn't even multithreaded.

Under Photoshop we see a reasonable performance increase by going to two processors.

Compiling two projects at once is what yields such very impressive results in this Visual C++ test.  Clock speed dominates over cache size in this case as the working data sets are able to fit almost entirely within the L2 cache of the Duron.



MPEG-4 Encoding Performance

Today's workstations aren't all about designing things in CAD windows; the CPU intensive process of encoding video using the very popular MPEG-4 codecs available has become a hobby for many. 

The latest build of the FlasK MPEG encoder is multithreaded and unlike previous builds, it actually makes use of both processors in a 2P system. 

Two Durons can encode 68% faster than a single Duron, not bad at all.  Throw more cache at the problem and the performance improves somewhat as well.  The Athlon MP is able to encode and interlace video in real time at over 60 fps.

3D Rendering Performance

The Cinema 4D benchmark is indicative of what we've seen in other 3D rendering tests; working data set sizes are not large enough to give the Athlon a major advantage over the Duron, but going to a 2P setup definitely helps.



3D Rendering & Animation Performance (continued)

The 3D Studio MAX results echo what we saw in Cinema 4D.



Final Words

Tyan has historically stayed away from AMD solutions because of a lack of focus on the higher end markets that Tyan services.  With the introduction of the 760MP chipset, Tyan's interests have definitely been piqued. 

The Thunder K7 motherboard that debuted back in June quickly became our pick for the best overall server motherboard.  It's ability to be used in a 1U chassis combined with the highly integrated nature of the platform made it perfect for many database servers (AnandTech included) as well as nodes in distributed computing farms.

The Tiger MP picks up where the Thunder K7 left off in that it is the perfect motherboard for the workstation user.  It's rare that you find a workstation in need of dual 100Mbit Ethernet controllers or such a weak on-board PCI Video solution; the Tiger MP comes with none of that excess baggage to a workstation user.  What is preserved however is the performance and quality of the original Thunder K7, just in a cheaper (less than $250), more basic package.

Will there ever be competition to the Thunder K7 and Tiger MP?  Yes; we'll see the first 760MPX solutions debut towards the end of this year, but designing this type of a motherboard isn't easy at all.  There are more than a few motherboard manufacturers that are already finding out the hard way.  You'll see competition to the Tiger MP, there's no doubt about that; and you'll see improvements in overclocking/tweaking features but that'll be about it.

If you are a workstation user and were turned off by the expensive price tag of the Thunder K7, then the Tiger MP is the board for you.  If you're just a regular user looking for a boost in multitasking performance, wait until the next speed grade of CPUs comes out and then upgrade to another single processor system. 

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