Tyan Tomcat i7230A S5160

Repeatedly Tyan-engineered motherboards enter our facilities, thanks to past experience with their exceptional variety of server and workstation products. When it comes to Tyan, it is no doubt that they are a leader in the motherboard industry for critical environments, and with this engineering reliability, their Linux focus also comes standard. Most recently, the Tyan Tomcat K8E-SLI S2866 had entered our labs, which was their first Socket 939 product to offer NVIDIA SLI support, and it came powered by the NVIDIA nForce Professional 2200 Chipset. The motherboard faired so well in our arsenal of testing that it was awarded with the Phoronix Editor's Choice Award, and was the first motherboard in its class to receive a perfect rating! Among many other products, the Tomcat i7221A S5151 motherboard also made an appearance with its E7221 + ICH-6R combination and faired quite well but the most recent version in this Pentium class is the i7230A S5160, which is the focus of this article today. The Tyan i7230A is based upon the E7230 + ICH-7R and features two PCI Express ports, four DDR2-667/533MHz slots, and a Pentium D supportive LGA-775 socket. In addition to the dual PCI Express interface, Tyan has chosen to implement the XGI Technology Volari Z7 integrated GPU and 16MB of video memory. How will Tyan's Mukilteo implementation be able to fair against the Copper River and Glenwood competition? In this article, we have compared the three Chipsets as well as a single and dual core comparison.

Features:

Processor
· Single Socket-T (LGA775 Socket)
· Supports Intel "Prescott/Smithfield/Cedar Mill" (Pentium 4 w/ HT or Pentium D) processor
· FSB supports 1.066GHz

Chipset
· Intel "Mukilteo" E7230 MCH + ICH-7R chipset
· Support for 1066MHz (1.066GHz) FSB
· SMSC SCH5017 Super I/O chip

Memory
· Four 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets
· Dual channel memory bus
· Up to 8GB unbuffered ECC DDR2-533/667 mem.

Expansion Slots
· (1) PCI Express x16 slot (with x8 signal) from E7230 MCH
· (1) PCI Express x16 slot (with x4 signal) from ICH-7R
· (4) PCI 32-bit, 33MHz slots
· Total of six usable expansion slots

System Management
· CPU thermal & voltage monitor support
· 2-pin chassis intrusion header
· 4-pin fan monitoring header w/ PWM

Integrated Serial ATA
· Four SATA 2.0 ports from Intel ICH-7R
· Integrated Host RAID 0, 1 support

Integrated Video
· XGI Volari Z7
· PCI interface with 16MB DDR memory

Intelligent Platform Management Interface
· Renesas Baseboard Management Controller (BMC)
· Tailored for IPMI 2.0 specification
· Supports remote Power on/off and reset support (IPMI-over-LAN)
· Server Management Daughter card via built-in 2 x 25 header

Integrated LAN Controllers
· Two Broadcom BCM5721 LAN controllers

BIOS
· PhoenixBIOS on 8Mbit Flash ROM
· Supports APM 1.2 & ACPI 1.0b
· Serial Console Redirect
· PXE via Ethernet, USB device boot
· PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0 Power Management
· User-configurable H/W monitoring
· Auto-configuration of hard disk types
· Watchdog timer (from Super I/O)
· Multiple boot options
· 48-bit LBA support
· Power management: S0, S1, S3, S4, S5

Form Factor
· ATX footprint (12" x 9.6", 305 x 244mm)
· EPS12V/SSI (24 + 8pin) power connectors

Contents:

As with all of the past Tyan motherboard solutions we have gotten our hands on over the years, the Tomcat i7230A S5160 shipped in the traditional, and simplistic, cardboard packaging we have become accustom to seeing. Inside of the packaging, the motherboard was protected by a thin layer of foam inside of the anti-static bag while separating the accessories from the ATX motherboard was a cardboard partition. The contents consisted of the S5160G2NR motherboard, one FDD cable, one ATA-133 IDE ribbon cable, one user’s manual, one quick reference guide, one driver CD, one I/O shield, two Serial ATA power adapters, and four Serial ATA data cables. The Tyan i7230A does sport dual PCI Express slots, however, the Intel Mukilteo is not presently certified by NVIDIA for Scalable Link Interface or ATI for CrossFire, nor are any Multi-GPU accessories included. Unlike many past Tyan motherboards that offered multiple product SKUs, the only model available currently for the i7230A is the S5160G2NR. However, Tyan does offer the Tomcat i7230B S5161G3NR, which offers a single PCI-X 64/133 slot, PCI Express x4, and a Tyan TARO SO-DIMM socket, rather than the PCI Express support found with the "A" variant.