Hi there,

I'm sort of butting in here as I'm not that knowledgable about MP Athlons, however just seeing you say temps of over 79C when under load - that's really *really* hot, even for an Athlon 1900+ . Remember the 1900+ is exactly the same chip as the 1800+, except for being a meager 67MHz higher clocked. As an example, I see a virtually 0 (that's zero) degree increase in load temperatures when overclocking mine (single Athlon XP system) from 1700+ to 1900+ levels.

I'd take a look at the heatsink installation, the Volcano 5 HSF (I'm assuming you actually have 2 of these ) should be doing much better, I don't think you need to think about replacing it, but it may be seated badly or - at those high temperatures - have something seriously wrong with the thermal paste application.

Kevin,

You'll have to press 'any key' in the BIOS to refresh the readings, 79C is NOT the actual CPU temperature (that'd have destroyed your CPUs).

Best regards,

Kevin,

If you're looking for a good heatsink solution I'd go with the Alpha PAL6035 with a nice 30..35CFM Papst fan. To my professional opinion and personal experience Alpha manufacturers some of the best heatsinks commercially available. For more information please check here:

http://www.alphanovatech.com/cat_pfe.html

Furthermore keep and eye on overall system temperature, I personally have a Tiger MP running in a small Midi-Tower (Antec SX-635) and am using just a 80x80 fan to blow cold air over the CPU + a couple of PAL605s to cool the CPUs. I rarely go over 50C even when running Genome@home for over 8-hrs a day.

Kind regards,

I've been having some real problems with this board too. When I first got it everything worked fine (after I tossed a DOA processor and stick of memory), but after the first couple of week I began having random crashes, and things have gone steadily downhill since. Now the thing will post, and then crash about 2-5 minutes later.

I've got dual Althlon MP 1700+, and two 256MB sticks of Crucial registered DDR PC2100. I wanted to be sure about the power supply and cooling, so I got an antec 400w and two thermalright sk-6's.

I've tried replacing everything, and have been trying to run the system with only one stick of memory and one processor, but all to no avail. The thing still dies on me... I thought it might be temperature related after reading some of the posts in here, but when I check the hardware monitor after a crash, it's never been above 40C.

I just wrote an e-mail to Tyan today, and am hoping that they'll get me a replacement motherboard. Has anyone who posted about having Crucial memory seen an improvement after replacing it? Hell, has anybody who's been having problems with this board got any tips?

While I cannot comment on Crucial memory I had ?? memory with namya chips. We recently replaced this memory with memory that seems to be more like the proposed DDR4 where 4 times multiplication is managed on the memory stick. The indications of memory based failures has ceased and only now seems related to heat.

The new memory is much taller and I can only get in 2 sticks. The third slot when I was able to get it inserted did not function. The stick was OK as it later worked in slot 2. The table in the manual is a bit vague and I suspect that the board is a bit sensitive to memory location in the slots. I was unable to try slot 4 since the taller memory does not fit between the board and the drives in the drive bay.

I use Global win CPU coolers and in a mag I read they seem about the best for getting rid of the heat.

I did replace the original PSU with an Enermax and this lowered the CPU temps by 3-5 degrees. every little helps.

Well I have had pretty good luck with this board. The only issue I have had (and it happens rarely) is that applications that are opened and running will just disappear. It sounds funny, but it is annoying. Has anyone had a similar issue? I am using bios revision 1.04. Also, could someone post the optimal bios settings for this board? Thanks.

Ken Yannacci

I noticed that that board is pretty rough on the power supply. I guess they should have added a secondary connection, two Athlons simply draw too much power. I have the board with two "1900" parts, all fans etc. are powered by secondary leads, not via the fan headers.

Also, there is negligible load on the PSU, as my main diskpack is a RAID with a separate PSU.

Nevertheless, the board was powered by the beefiest PSU I could find, an Enermax EG 651P-V. After battling with the board (and even buying a 2nd one ..) I checked the voltages (did not occur to me, given the monster of a PSU). Lo, the 5V rail was at 4.6 - not good. I loaded the PSU as bit more (some hi power units need that) - no change.

I swapped the Enermax EG 651P-V for a new one, which gave me slightly better numbers:

BIOS 5V: 4.88 , Tyan System Monitor: 4.65 - still not good

I swapped that Enermax EG 651P-V for an old standby of mine, a PC Power & Cooling ATX 450. This behaves much better.

BIOS 5V: 5.07 BIOS 12V: 12.18
Sysmon 5V: 4.86 12V: 11.94 - within the margin. I'd like my 5V number slightly higher that 5, but I won't complain.

Before we start distrusting the Enermax: It does just fine in other motherboards I have.

I don't know what is going on, but 4.6 V on the 5V line spells slow death for a diskdrive (lower V, higher A) and can ruin the day of many other parts.

Why there is a significant difference between the BIOS read and the Sysmon read is beyond me. If the reason is higher load due to the system running under NT, then I'll get VERY nervous. A 5% drop in a very lightly (i.e. no apps) loaded system would point to disastrous effects under _real_ load. I hope it's just a software problem - Sandra says the 5V rail is at 4.92, but the 12V is at 9.42 - I really don't know who to believe - the only thing I really trust is my $250 Digital VOM, and it says 5V and 11.9 at the plug.

Anyway: With the 2460, have a very good look at your PSU. According to my tests (and I have a whole box full of PSUs ...) the Power & Cooling is best for the job.

Distrusting the PSU is good advice anyway. I had a whole batch of cheap 400W PSUs, and they were drastically too high, like 5.8V and 13.5 ...

Hi everyone.

My first post here at hardwareanalysis.

I've just bought a Tyan Tiger MP, 2 x Athlon MP XP 1800+, 2 x 512 MB Registered Kingston DDRRAM, 2 x Thermaltake Viking coolers and a GeForce4 4400 to replace my old machine. Now I get loads of problems, and I had my motherboard replaced (which indicates it's not the motherboard), and the problems are exactly the same:

1) Floppy drive failure, even if the cable is correctly attached.
2) Sometimes after initialization of the second SCSI controller everything stops. I can reset but it will not continue past the second SCSI controller. Have to clear SMOS to be able to boot again.
3) Cannot install the GeForce4 in Windows. There's a memory range conflict I haven't been able to get rid of.

This makes me unable to update the BIOS to 1.04 since the darn floppy drive doesn't work. I have tried changing the floppy drive, and have stripped the machine of everything except the GeForce4 and the SCSI controller I boot from.

The PSU is a Target 420W PSU with 40A on 5V. I have a second PSU at 300W for supplying power to my disks (8 drives and 4 of them are Seagate Cheetah 10K RPM).

If anyone here have an idea as to what is going on, I'd be happy to hear from you. I've been 'toying' with this hardware since Thursday and have so far spent 35+ hours on it and nothing works. I should have it ready by Monday, but it seems like a 'Mission Impossible'..

Thank you!

Regards,

Michael Nielsen-Englyst
Imagic ApS, Denmark

Not that this is very helpful, but It appears that there is a known problem using a GeForce 4 and the AMD 760MP/X chipset. I've found several places on the web complaining about this incompatibility.

Unfortunately, it's also what I'm running, and I have the random crashes to prove it.

If you've got another video card laying around, you might want to give that a try.

Well, I've tried the GeForce 256 DDR, but that is not the problem. Talked to our dealer, and then to the danish distributor of Tyan products, and it seems that my dealer had received a shipment of faulty Tyan Tiger MP motherboards. I'll know later today (I hope!).. So all they gotta do is send me a new motherboard. *patiently waiting*

And yes, I know of the incompatability GeForce4 introduces, but it's fixed in a BIOS update.

Regards,

Michael Nielsen-Englyst
Imagic ApS, Denmark

Wow, sorry to hear all the problems folks are having with Tyan Tiger MP boards. Mine seams to work fine, built it in Dec. 2001 as video and music rig. Will do close to real time MPEG 2 compression in software only.

Here are some details, note absense of SCSI, which may be contributing to some of the other woes folks are having, although it looks like there are several real problems of differing types. Anyway, here is what is working for me, maybe there will be a clue in my setup that others can use:

Tiger MP (not X)
Dual Athlon MP 1800s
Dynatron Copper sinks, sinks and procs mounted in MB bundle from J&N Computer Services (don't get a thrill any more mounting CPU coolers I guess
Panaflow 80mm fans on IceHole 80 to 60 adapters for CPU cooling, runs in 40-42 C range light loads, and looks nice.
1 Gig Corsair registered DDR 2100 (2x512)
Lian Li Aluminum case (62), which has very good cooling, not quite a CoolerMaster, but more drive room
Enermax 651 PS
Radeon 8500
Promise TX4 with 4x100 gig WD 7200 RPM drives running RAID 0+1 for good combo of speed and security, the two front 80mm case fans blow across these hard drives
1 x 100 Gig WD 7200 RPM drive as boot drive on built-in IDE
2x 24X TDK VeloCD burners on built-in IDE (dual burning using Nero)
1x Pioneer A03 DVD-R burner on built-in IDE
Sound Blaster Audigy Ex
WinXP Pro, I let it auto update
Run a slot cooler next to the Radeon to help pull the hot air from the graphics card.
All round cables, wires routed and bundled as carefully as I'm able to maximize airflow.
Belkin 650 VA UPS
Various audio and video components connected via SB and 1394 ports. One external 1394 drive (WD 100 gig in Granite Digital enclosure) for moving large files between machines.
Believe I'm on the 1.04 BIOS

During assembly, I built it up very slowly, i.e., minimum components to boot initially (hard drive, video card), do web updates of drivers, etc., then add next component, one at a time, update drives, repeat. I found this generates a much more stable system than doing multiple component installs simultaneously. I also run ConfigSafe Desktop (not Complete Recovery) to recover from any serious install problems, but have not needed it yet on this box.

REO

Thanks for your configuration info. We bought an UPS to see if we had some bad mojo in our power. Seems that it was not the problem. And it also seems that the board was OK anyway. Our dealer tested it in their test rig, and it worked flawlessly. Now they have my entire machine out there for repairs and they have not found the reason for it being unstable yet. And it's only in my machine it doesn't work. I hate when hardware doesn't work

Because of floppy drive errors (which are gone when the MB are placed in the test machine), I was unable to update the BIOS. But is has been flashed to the 1.04 version now by the dealer.

Could it be the power supply? What PSU are recommended with the Tyan Tiger MP??

Thanks!


Regards,

Michael Nielsen-Englyst
Imagic ApS, Denmark

Michael,

I am using the Enermax 651, 530 watt PSU with success on the Tiger MP. I am sure there are other good choices (like PC Power & Cooling), but that is the one I have working. Given number of drives in my setup, thought it best to have plenty of power headroom.

Regards

Thanks Ron. I'll look into it. If this does not fix my problem, I'm afraid I have to return all the parts and let my Toaster[2] work with one single 700 MHz Athlon.. for now..


Regards,

Michael Nielsen-Englyst
Imagic ApS, Denmark

Dear Testers and Supporters,

I buyed me here in Germany at the 15.12.2001 a Tyan Tiger MP S2460 MB.
I already made a Bios-Update (1.04.03 beta).

My actually (minimal-tested) HW-Configuration is as following :

Tyan Tiger S2460 MP MB
2 * AMD Athlon 1800+ MP (average temperature at 49°C).
2 * CPU-Copper-Spacer
2 * CPU-FANs ( Kanie Hedgehog 294M with a DELTA FFB0612SHE Cooler, 73.85 m3/h )
1 * Kingston registered DDR Ram 2100 512 MB
1 Enermax 550W PSU
1 Leadtek Winfast GeForce 3 Ti 500 64 MB DDR Ram AGP Graphic-card
1 SCSI-U2W-Raid Controller ADAPTEC 131U2W, actuall BIOS Version 4.20.26
1 U2W-HDD Quantum Atlas 10K I 18.1 GB, 2048 MB Cache, 10.000 RPM
NOTHING is overclocked !

I tried following OS :

Windows 98 (absolutly instable !)
Windows 2000 Professional (is stopping after a abnormal time)
Windows XP (can't install, the setup is hanging)
SuSE-Linux (7.4, 8.0) (is stopping after a abnomal time)
Red-Hat Linux 7.2 Professional (the same as bei SuSE)

My favorite OS is Windows 2000, cause sometimes I want to play some games ...

I changed MANY BIOS-Settings, with the result, that I can installing now without any problems, but M$ (W2k) is everytime stopping (after a time where it works fine or after I logged me in and the Desktop is turned up).
(I tried it with ACPI enabled or disabled..., I am using the Detonator driver-version 28.32).
The OS is in the german language, now I have the following Error-Message when I try to start the seti-client (commandline) :

"Die Anweisung in "0x00413c20" vewrweist auf Speicher in "0x0140b000".
Der Vorgang "read" konnte nicht auf dem Speicher durchgeführt werden.
Klicken Sie auf "OK" um das Programm zu beenden.

(I can translate it in english when someone want it).

I already called with the Microsoft-Support, they means that my problems (hanging, stopping) can be a SCSI-Termination-Problem or a Memory-Problem.
After this call I checked my SCSI-System again but I didn't find any wrong Termination settings.

Today I called with a german Tyan-Supporter, he sent me already a Memory-Test-Program, which I am executing at the moment.
He means that it could be a memory-problem too or I should change the motherboard.

I already changed my SCSI-Controller to an Dawi-Controll 2976 UW,
but the same problems appears.
I changed the graphic-card to an Elsa Erazor II AGP or an S3 Trio 64V+ PCI.
By the Trio-Graphic-Card I get while I am turning the PC on, and there is no Monitorcable connected the Error-Sound from the internal speaker that the RAM is not ok (1 time long, 3 times short), but I know that this card is working fine in other systems and there I only get the Error-Sound that the Graphic-Card is not ok.
Nothing helps.

I already removed any cards, I disabled any BIOS-Settings (USB, COM, Printer, Diskette, AGP Fast Write and so on) I can, but nothing helps.

Can anyone help me ?

Excuse me for my english...

Malte

( chaman@web.de )

Sorry Nien sprieken zer gut deusch

A few observations

I saw many of the same problems early on with 1.03 bios.

Waste of time using Win 98 since it is not dual processor capable. use Win 2K or XP pro those being dual processor capable. Also for best results it is better if the application is able to use the second processor with multithreading functionality

I used scsi and get later DDR RAM since earlier variants where not stable with more than one stick of RAM

Do a minimum build single drive single stick of memory simple video card etc.

My move to an Enermax supply was a good move it removes a greater volume of air from the processor area and was worth 2-3 C degrees

refer to our danish correspondent several weeks ago where there was a batch of faulty motherboards worth checking

Happy computing

Brendan falvey
Falvon Engineering
Australia

Recently I've purchased the Tiger MPX S2466N-4M with 2xMP2000 CPUs running with the Enermax EG451P-VE PSU. As this PSU does not make the ATX12V connector, I've to make do with the ATX2.01/2.03 and the auxilliary PS. However, I can only get the POST message occasionlly and no video signal or beep for most of the occasions. Tried stripping the machine down to graphics card only and the phenomenon persists. Can someone advise/help urgently?
Thanks.

I sent the Mainboard back to the german support center (I am from germany), I got a new MB in one and a half week back and now its absolutly STABLE, with the same configuration as my old MB and more cards.

But when you try it to install W2k or something like this its better to remove any not neccesary cards because I had during the installation one or two IRQ-Conflicts, and the blue screens stoped only after I installed the SP2.

After a testtime of over 2 weeks my system is now really stable !

You have three years warranty.
The supporting about tyan is very fine, I checked before I sent the MB back the memory with a tool (memtest 2.9) which did I got from a supporter.

If nothing helps, you better sent it back and order a NEW one.

Greetings,

Malte

I sent the Mainboard back to the german support center (I am from germany), I got a new MB in one and a half week back and now its absolutly STABLE, with the same configuration as my old MB and more cards.

But when you try it to install W2k or something like this its better to remove any not neccesary cards because I had during the installation one or two IRQ-Conflicts, and the blue screens stoped only after I installed the SP2.

After a testtime of over 2 weeks my system is now really stable !

You have three years warranty.
The supporting about tyan is very fine, I checked before I sent the MB back the memory with a tool (memtest 2.9) which did I got from a supporter.

If nothing helps, you better sent it back and order a NEW one.

Greetings,

Malte

This result is consistent with my experience. After many false starts chronicled in this article I obtained a later Tiger MPX board and my client is very happy rock solid using 1.5GB of RAM. While we had reach a reasonably stable state with the earlier Tiger MP board it still showed signs of instability crashing every day or so.

If you have client with an earlier board and stability is an issue I suggest readers seriously consider the later board.

I should point out that I advised my client that he only loaded his processing software and left all of this utility software including office on his second computer. Now we have to get Bill G to make Windows more efficient and reduce the clutter on systems and we could build system to GO-GO-GO.

As an aside my client has contact with other professionals who rely on Silicon graphics Unix boxes for similar work and were suppried we were getting better processing throughput.

In the Tiger MPX and Athlon combination Tyan and AMD are to be congratulated on providing a cost effective solution to high performance workstations