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Tyan
Trinity i7205 - Board Level Analysis |
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Under the Hood |
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The
Bundle
Part of keeping
costs down involves limiting a board's bundle to the
components that are absolutely necessary and even more
importantly, useful. Tyan opted for a minimalist
approach with the Trinity i7205, including little more than
a single floppy drive cable, a single IDE cable, a
customized I/O shield to fit the board's back panel, a heat
sink retention device, which usually comes installed on most
other boards, a manual and driver CD. Manufacturers
like ASUS and MSI are including extra USB headers, S/PDIF
audio brackets and diagnostic LEDs. Meanwhile, Tyan is
neglecting all of these "extras" we've come to take for
granted from others.
The
Layout
The Trinity
i7205 is laid out neatly. Perhaps that is one of the
benefits associated with designing a board that isn't bogged
down with extra features. The processor interface is
flanked by six, 3300 microfarad electrolytic capacitors
that, while close to the processor interface, do not
interfere with heat sink installation. Power delivery
comes compliments of a three-phase solution controlled by
Intersil's HIP6301CB multi-phase buck chip and three 6601B
companion gate drivers. The desired effect of this
design is the use of smaller (lower cost) MOSFET transistors
and the need for fewer capacitors. We've always been
particular about the ATX power connector, and Tyan has
addressed this by placing the 20-pin connector at the top of
the board, away from the processor interface. On the
other hand, the 12V auxiliary power connector is located
below the processor socket.
Unlike NVIDIA's
nForce2 chipset, which utilizes three memory slots to
populate two DDR channels, the "Granite Bay" chipset is able
to accommodate four slots (one of its biggest benefits).
The channels are physically organized into pairs and power
is regulated by Intersil's ISL6225CA controller. Keep
in mind that the chipset was designed to operate in
dual-channel mode. But, if you've only got a single
module, it will function with one, 64-bit channel,
albeit with a maximum throughput of 2.1GB per second. In
considering layout, Tyan's engineers wisely placed the DIMM
slots far enough from the AGP Pro slot so that installing
memory doesn't necessitate removing the graphics card.
The bottom of
the board enjoys the same spacious layout. On one
side, Intel's RC82540EM Gigabit MAC/PHY interfaces with an
RJ-45 connector on the back of the motherboard. Also,
Analog Device's AD1981A provides analog audio output and an
S/PDIF connector for digital output. The other side of
the board was clearly designed with a SCSI controller in
mind, but that spot is left vacant on the Trinity i7205.
At least we can enjoy six USB 2.0 ports, right?
Actually, no - the board comes standard sporting a pair of
USB ports, and if you'd like to take advantage of the rest,
you'll have to find an optional front-panel header.
The
BIOS
If I had to
summarize the S2662's BIOS in two words, I'd say "passing
thought." Even the most recent BIOS file is
disappointingly simple. Then again, this is a
workstation board, is it not? Yet, Tyan's Trinity
i7205 product page claims that the S2662 is the "solution
for the demands of the workstation and high-end desktop
market." As far as we're concerned, a high-end desktop
board should be tunable to some degree, offering additional
performance to the enthusiast willing to pay extra for
faster memory and a beefy heat sink. Yet, the S2662
offers no semblance of frequency modifications, no voltage
settings and it lacks the ability to tune memory settings.
In contrast, we were able to run CAS 1.5 timings with the
ASUS P4G8X Deluxe board in the lab. Tyan's Trinity
i7205 does provide hardware monitoring, but beyond basic
settings, you can't do much more than toggle Hyper Threading
on or off.
It is entirely
possible that Tyan may have a BIOS update planned for the
board with a few extra features, but we haven't heard
anything to indicate this may be true. Be forewarned:
unless you're running a system you know will never be
tweaked, the S2662 won't provide flexibility in terms of
BIOS settings.
Setup
and Benchmarking
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