Tyan Tempest i5400XT

BIOS:

Tyan continues to use a Phoenix Technologies for its BIOSes and the version we had used during testing on the i5400XT was v1.00D. This BIOS contains the assortment of options we have been accustomed to seeing on other workstation motherboards. The real-time sensors that can be monitored through the BIOS include not only both CPU cores but also the DIMM area, front area, and PCI area. We're quite pleased that Tyan has placed sensors on these three different areas of the motherboard. The fan speeds for both CPU fans, front fan, rear fan, and PCI area fan can also be monitored. Last but not least is also the voltages for both CPU cores, VTT, +3.3V, +5.00V, and +12.00V lines.

When running Intel's Linux-ready Firmware Developer Kit (Release 3), there were five failures, six warnings, and eight passes. The failures were attributed to the BIOS not implementing hardware coordination cleaning for the MTRR validation, CPU frequency scaling, DMRA remapping (VT-d), and no SMIBIOS or DMI entry point. (Editor's Note: A failure within the Intel LFDK does not mean the system is faulty or has other issues. See the above article for more information.)