Tyan
S1854 Trinity 400
Tyan has always been known for producing
one of the most stable motherboards on the market. Their Tyan S1854 Trinity
400, with no exception, is another quality product that easly makes it to
the list.
As in the previous BoardRunner 6VA694CX board, the S1854 uses the same standard
VT82C596B south-bridge. Tyan also manufactures the S1854 mainboard with a
sound solution. This version; the S1854A, is the exact same board as it even
uses the same south-bridge. Instead of implanting the newer VT82C686A south-bridge
featuring the AC-97 Codec, Tyan decided to use the Creative ES1373 audio chip
which is another acceptable home/office audio solution similar to the AC-97
Codec.
Their S1854 is based on the twin CPU architecture. This means it has a slot-1
and socket-370 interface on the board. Only one CPU can be used at a same
time. The optional Slot/Socket simply acts to aid in the removal of slocket
adapters. I am personally not a big twin design fan because you will end up
paying the extra money for that feature, even if you will never plan to use
it. On the other hand, this technique gives deeper processor flexibility to
the ones who care.
One set of jumpers is present on the board that
controls the clock multiplier. In order to get the motherboard up, you will
have to choose the appropriate multiplier then you can tweak the clock frequency
through the BIOS Setup. Tyan seems to be one of the few companies that care
about expansion. Their Trinity 400 was the only mainboard that featured six
master PCI slots. I would like to applaude them for implanting another PCI
slot instead of using an AMR slot, something that almost all-participating
companies in this article did.
The
S1854 features 3DIMM slots, supporting up to 512Mbytes each. Taking a closer look
at the PCB, there might have been a solution in implenting the fourth, but in
order to respect the VIA133A limitation standards, Tyan decided to keep it standard.
A fourth DIMM slot would not have been a logical solution anyway, as the motherboard
would not accept four double-sided DIMMs.
The
placement of the HDD/FDD connectors is very well positioned. They are all
placed after the third DIMM slot and are easy to access. The Tyan board was
the only board of the four that had DIMM/AGP interferance problems. In order
to install the video adapter, you
will have to close the DIMM locks.
The Trinity 400 S1854 was the single board that
officialy did not like overclocking. The maximum this board could overclock
was 112MHz bus using a 550E PIII CPU. I spoke with Tyan about the problem
and they confesed that this specific product is not quite the overclocking
queen. This automaticaly removes the S8154 board from the overclocker’s list.
The S1854 performed quite well under the 100MHz bus tests. While not the best,
the Tyan was one of the most stable boards of the round up. It also managed
to get some of the nicest memory benchmarks, superior to its competitors.
