Tyan Tomcat i7230A S5160

BIOS:

Unlike past Tyan motherboards that were loaded up with the standard and workstation versions of the Phoenix BIOS, the Tyan Tomcat i7230A shipped with the Phoenix Technologies cME FirstBIOS Pro. The Tyan BIOS that shipped with our sample was v1.02. Unlike the default BIOS design for the Phoenix Award WorkstationBIOS, the cME FirstBIOS template is laid out much like American Megatrend's BIOS. The BIOS pages for the Tyan motherboard include main, advanced, security, power, boot, and exit. The main page, as implied, simply displays the general information for the system while the advanced page contains additional Chipset and processor options. The Chipset configurable area includes options for the default primary video adapter, spread spectrum, and Parallel/Serial ATA items. The processor options simply include altering the Hyper-Threading state and setting the maximum extension CPUID to three. When it comes to the hardware monitoring, four fans (J27, J28, J60, and J61) are monitored as well as the CPU temperature and ambient temperature. The voltage monitoring consists of +12V, VBat, +5V, VCPU, VCC, and 3.3Vsb. Although the BIOS may not consist of the enthusiast features (i.e. DRAM timing, FSB manipulation, voltage control) that many look forward to, it does contain all of the essential features expected for being designed for workstation and server usage.