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I will be the first to admit it, the Abit BP6 did more for the multiprocessor community than any other single product that I can remember. Who could fault cheap power? Anyone interested in some inexpensive power could run over to Pricewatch and order themselves up an Abit BP6 and a pair of Celeron 366's and overclock those bad-boys to 550mhz... EACH! Oh yes, I certainly remember the days of the first 1000mhz (combined) systems well. It made me feel inadequate with my piddly little dual PIII 450 system ;-)

Now I didn't actually get my first BP6 for more than a year after their release, but it was definitely an influence on this readership of this site. This was the first "inexpensive" SMP platform available to the normal hobbyist for his/her tinkering pleasure. Unfortunately Intel had other plans. With the release of the Celeron2 at 533mhz, Intel did the unthinkable... They actually disabled SMP compatibility! Ugh! Now anyone craving "The Power of Two" (tm) had to anty-up and get the real-deal PIII, not a very budget oriented proposition for a lot of people. Fast forward a year or two...

AMD was really making some waves with their new line of "Spitfire" cored Athlons and Durons. Even the "budget" Duron from AMD was spanking faster clock-speed PIII's and even Intel's flagship P4. This could be the ticket to some more cheap dual power, but would we ever see them in a dual configuration? Finally, only a few months ago, AMD released a new core for their Athlon processors, a new chipset and Tyan released the very first dual AMD motherboard. Unfortunately the Thunder K7 was far from a "budget" platform. Hey, you get what you pay for and the TK7 has it all. With dual onboard NICs, onboard video, U160 SCSI, 64bit PCI and a proprietary power supply Tyan aimed the TK7 squarely at the high-end workstation and server market (a feat that was pulled off quite well actually). Still no love for the "budget" workstation crew... Until now.

Just a few months after Tyan wowed the hardware community with the Thunder K7, they are back at it again. It just wouldn't be right if Tyan didn't bolster their "Tiger" line of motherboards with a dual AMD solution. What is a motherboard manufacturer to do? How about strip all the extra features from your high-end board, cut the price in (less than) half and call it a day? That is exactly what Tyan did with the Tiger MP, but that isn't the end of the story.

Some seriously cheap people are out there in the home user/hobbyist market that still weren't happy! I personally think that the AthlonMP is a pretty good deal considering it's level of performance and its price compared to the slower, more expensive P4 Xeon and the slower, comparably priced PIII. Not everyone shares my point of view and spending habits. Since the older "Spitfire" cored Athlons and Durons experienced some problems when running in a dual configuration, the AthlonMP was it. Now AMD has been claiming all along that they would not disable SMP compatibility in their Duron line, but when would it be optimized for it? It doesn't do much good to run a CPU in a dual config if the performance isn't there. Fortunately AMD had one more trick up their sleeves... The "Morgan" core based Duron. I won't go into everything that the "Morgan" core brings to the table for the sake of space, but if you are interested you should read the best overview/review of the 1ghz Duron on the net. Suffice it to say that the "Morgan" Duron is an undercover Palomino with a smaller on-die cache. But will it be the budget SMP savior?

I know by now you're asking yourself "Geez! Is this a motherboard review or a history lesson?!?". It is a bit of both, but I am almost done here. I am sure that there are an equal number of people who are asking "At a price of ~$200USD, can we even call the Tiger MP a "budget" motherboard?" (Even Jim asked me the same question :-). I'll get to that too... Bear with me. Let's get on with it.

Layout / Setup / Compatibility

One problem that affected some people with the Thunder K7 was the sheer size of the motherboard. It is truly a big board that requires a very roomy case. Fortunately the Tiger MP doesn't suffer the same fate as its bigger brother. By eliminating all of the add-ons and targeting the board at the (tower case using) workstation market, Tyan was able to trim the Tiger MP down to a standard ATX sized PCB while still retaining a good layout for cooling and card placement. I used Thermaltake Volcano II coolers, Alpha PAL6035 coolers, and the standard AMD endorsed Taisol coolers, all without problem or incident. While the row of capacitors running between the sockets does limit finger room, a pair of needlenose pliers and some patience was all it took to get the heatsinks installed.

Like its big brother, the Thunder K7, the Tiger MP does require registered DDR memory. I used memory from Corsair and Crucial in my board without incident. There has been some problems reported by users of the Thunder K7 in regards to using four sticks of Crucial DDR, but I have not had the opportunity to test it myself. I am awaiting the official word from Tyan on the "memory bank" issue, and I will let you know as soon as I find out.

The one main downfall (IMHO) of the Thunder K7 was that it necessitated the purchase of a very expensive proprietary power supply. There is a story behind that power supply that has to do with the AGP Pro standard and Intel's failure to provide the specification information, but I'm not going to go into that here. Suffice it to say that AMD and Tyan were stuck holding the bag, and we were stuck shelling out crazy money for a special power supply. Not so with the Tiger MP though. This thing runs on a standard ATX PSU! That's right, any quality power supply that puts out 300W or more is fair game for the Tiger MP system builder. I have personally tried a 300W supplies from Antec and Enermax which have both worked without a hitch.

This board is strictly no frills, and its packaging and bundled accessories are too. Inside the box you will find a manual, the board itself, a floppy cable, IDE cable, and a driver CD. That's it... I did say "no frills" didn't I?

My wife, daughter and I moved into our new house recently so, being without an internet connection for a few weeks (Go Ameritech and Time Warner!), I had some extra time to play around with my Tiger MP. One of the things we get bitched at about the most regarding our reviews is that we don't test motherboards with every single card and configuration under the sun. While I don't have every single add-in card that there is, I do have quite a few things laying around the house, so this time I put the screws to the Tiger MP to see how it would hold up. Over the course of the last few weeks, my Tiger MP has run flawlessly with a Leadtek GeForce3, Creative GeForce2 GTS, All-in-Wonder Radeon, SB Live MP3+ 5.1, SB Live Value (original), SB PCI 64, SB PCI 128, NICs from Intel and 3Com, and an Adaptec 2100S U160 RAID controller (be sure to use the AMD chipset drivers for your OS!) and it did it all with a pair of AthlonMP 1.2ghz and/or a pair of Duron 1ghz. I apologize if your particular card or configuration isn't included in that list, but hey... I can only do so much. The Tiger MP handled it all and begged for more.

Testing: Methodology and Systems >>