Tyan S2495 Trinity KT400

Name: Tyan S2495 Trinity KT400
Brand: Tyan

by HH Editor — Monday, February 17, 2003, 11:00 PM EDT

Tyan S2495 Trinity KT400
More KT400 Madness

By, Tom Laverriere
February 17, 2003

Now that NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset has become mainstream, it seems as though many other AMD based motherboard chipsets just pale a little. We know at least one chipset maker that would disagree with this of course, VIA. VIA's KT400 offering has a lot of the same bells and whistles that the nForce2 provides. With the KT400 you get AGP 8X, DDR400 ( though not guaranteed ), support for AthlonXP 333MHz front side bus processors, USB 2.0, and ATA 133 to name a few. So, if Dual Channel DDR is not all that important to you, then the KT400 chipset should be. Although we may not see some of the same benchmark restuls we see from an nForce2 motherboard, the KT400 gives us a fair amount of bandwidth and a lot of integrated features to boot.

Tonight on the test bench, we have Tyan's version of the VIA Apollo KT400 chipset, the S2495 Trinity KT400. When most of us hear the brand Tyan, the words quality, stable, and no frills come to mind. However, the Tyan S2495 should put that "no frills" idea to rest. The Tyan S2495 comes packed with extras. For starters the Tyan S2495 has two types of RAID support: ATA 133 and SATA 150. The board comes with onboard 6 channel sound, 4 USB 2.0 jacks with support for 6 total, 10/100Mb/s ethernet, and unofficial DDR400 support. Tyan has packed this baby tight. On the other hand, having all these bells and whistles doesn't amount to much, unless you can hear them loud and clear. In other words, does this board perform? Let's see if the Tyan S2495 has what it takes to compete in today's agressive AMD based motherboard chipset market.

VIA KT400 &The Tyan S2495 Trinity KT400

DDR400 for the Athlon processor

Processors

Socket A processor
Supports one AMD Athlon XP/ Athlon / Duron processor supports up to 2600+ CPU

266/200MHz Front-Side Bus Support

Chipset
VIA KT400 North Bridge

VIA 8235 South Bridge

Winbond W83697HF LPC I/O chip

Memory
Three 184-pin 2.5V DDR DIMM sockets

Supports DDR 333/266/200 (DDR 400 no guaranty)

Up to 3GB Registered or Un-buffered

Integrated LAN Controller
VIA VT6103 10/100Base-TX Ethernet controller

One RJ-45 LAN Connector with LED's

Intetelligent Audio

6-Channel AC'97 audio CODEC (ALC650)

Line-in, Line-out, Mic-in rear jacks

One 4-pin CD-ROM audio header (ATAPI)

One 4-pin Auxiliary audio header (ATAPI)

SPDIF output connector

Integrate IDE RAID (Optional)

Highpoint 372N controller

RAID 0, 1, 0+1 supported

Dual channel master mode support up to four ATA 133/100/66 IDE drives

Integrated SerialATA (Optional)

Silicon Image 3112 controller

Two SATA ports

Integrated PCI IDE

Dual channel master mode support up to four IDE devices

Support for ATA-133 / 100 / 66 IDE drives and ATAPI compliant devices

Integrated I/O Interface

One floppy connector supports up to two drives

6 USB 2.0 ports (4 ports on rear panel, 2 ports by pin-header)

One IrDA connector

Rear Panel I/O ports

Stacked PS/2 Mouse & Keyboard ports

Stacked two USB 2.0 ports and RJ45 LAN port on top

Stacked two USB 2.0 ports

Two 9-pin UART Serial ports

One 25-pin SPP/ECP/EPP Parallel port

Audio jacks

Expansion Slots

One 8X/4X AGP slot (1.5V)

Six 32-bit 33MHz PCI 2.2 slots

BIOS
Award BIOS 4Mbit flash rom

Support APM 1.2 and ACPI 1.0B

PnP, DNI 2.0, WfM 2.0 power management

Jumper free for System overclocking and overvoltage for CPU, memory, AGP buses

Power

On board VRM, 2-phase PWM

ATX 20-pin power connector

Regulatory

EMI - CE, FCC Class B (others are optional)

WHQL - Windows 2000 and XP

Miscellaneous

WOL, STR, Three fan connectors

POST code 7-segment LED display (Optional)

Form Factor

ATX footprint (12" x 9.6", 305 x 245mm)

VIA Apollo KT400 Architecture

From the diagram above, we can see that the KT400 Northbridge and the VT8235 Southbridge pack quite a punch. Although the diagram also shows that DDR 400MHz support is offered by the KT400 chipset, Tyan makes a note in their manual that this particular feature is not guaranteed. We'll delve into that a bit further, but from first glance this Tyan KT400 motherboard looks feature rich and ready for some benchmarking. But before we move on to the benchmarks and overclocking, let's take a closer look at what's packed onto this motherboard.

A Closer Look: Tyan S2495 Trinity KT400