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KISS - four
letters that together, can mean so many different things.
It's a '70's rock band, it's a gesture of affection, and for
Tyan, it's
an acronym. "Keep It Simple, Stupid" - quite possibly
the best way to avoid costly mistakes that occur when a
manufacture gets over-ambitious in its motherboard design.
Indeed, Tyan's corporate overview cites reliability as a
primary focus of the company and its products reflect that.
And as a result, Tyan has established a reputation for
dependable server and workstation boards, only recently
venturing into graphics with ATI's RADEON family.
Competing manufacturers often release two or three boards
based on the same chipset in order to capture various price
points. Not so with Tyan. Instead, they have
historically manufactured a single board based on platforms
known to deliver stable operation.
As such, the
S2662 Trinity i7205 board is Tyan's only "Granite Bay"
product. Tyan does offer i845GL and i845E boards, both
clearly designed with integration in mind, as well as a rack
mount-ready ServerWorks board, but none of these products
appeals to the desktop enthusiast. The Trinity i7205,
however, is more well-rounded. It features AGP 8X Pro,
integrated audio, USB 2.0 and of course, dual channel DDR
memory support. But while it may be a stand-out in
Tyan's own line of high-end products, we'd like to know how
the board fares against competing products, and if that
$200+ price tag can be justified.
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Tyan
S2662 Trinity i7205 Board Specifications |
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Simple, Yet Robust |
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Processors
Socket 478 processor
Supports one Pentium 4 processor up to 3.06GHz+
533/400MHz Front-Side Bus Support
Chipset
Intel E7205 chipset
MCH+ICH4+FWH
Winbond W83627 Super I/O chip
Analog Devices ADM1027 for system monitoring
Memory
Four
184-pin 2.5V DDR DIMM sockets
Supports up to 4GB of
unbuffered DDR266/200
Dual channel memory
bus
Supports ECC/non-ECC
modules
Integrated LAN Controller
Intel 82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller
One RJ-45 LAN
connector with LEDs
Intetelligent Audio
Intel ICH4
AC-97-compliant audio link
ADI 1981A codec
Line-in, line-out, mic-in
rear jacks
One RCA S/PDIF
connector
One front panel audio
header
One 4-pin analog
CD-ROM audio header
One 4-pin auxiliary
audio header
Integrated PCI IDE
Provides two bus
master channels for up to four EIDE devices
Support for UDMA
100/66/33 IDE drives
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Integrated I/O Interface
One floppy connector
supports one drive
Two 9-pin serial
connectors
One 25-pin ECP/EPP/SPP
parallel header
6 USB 2.0 ports (two
rear, four via header)
PS/2 keyboard and
mouse ports
System Management
Total of four 3-pin
fan headers
Three fan headers with
tachometer monitoring
One 3-pin chassis
intrusion detection
Temperature, voltage,
and fan monitoring
Expansion Slots
One 8X/4X AGP
Pro50 slot (1.5V)
Five 32-bit 33MHz (5V)
PCI slots
Total of six usable
slots
BIOS
Phoenix BIOS 6.0 on 4/8Mbit Flash ROM
LAN remote boot (PXE)
Quick boot and
multiple boot support
ACPI v2.0 support
Auto configuration of
IDE hard disk types
Form Factor
ATX footprint (12" x
9.6", 304 x 243mm)
6-layer design
ATX12V power connector
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Intel E7205 Block Diagram
"Granite
Bay" isn't so much about new technology, as it is the
evolution of the technologies we are already familiar
with. The link between the processor and MCH is
designed to run at 133MHz, quad-pumped, effectively
533MHz. Each of the DDR memory channels supports
up to DDR266 memory, which may seem like a step back
from the PC3200 modules that power many single-channel
systems, but combined, the E7205 chipset is able to
offer 4.2GB per second of memory bandwidth. Of
course, this matches the 533MHz front side bus
perfectly. Moreover, "Granite Bay" is Intel's
first consumer chipset with proper AGP 8x support,
enabling a 2.1GB per second link between the graphics
interface and MCH. An 8-bit link connects the MCH
and ICH4, providing 266MB per second between the two.
SiS and VIA have already implemented high speed links
between these two components so it will be interesting
to see how long it takes Intel to follow suit,
especially with the addition of Gigabit Ethernet, USB
2.0 and other devices that can quickly gobble up
available bandwidth under full utilization.
The Board: Tyan Trinity i7205
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