You've recently heard about "Dual-Processor" systems, and wanted to know more. So you jumped on the net and started doing some searches and asking around. 6 months ago, you would have found next to nothing. Thankfully, you now have 2CPU.com to help you out! And we're still growing…

Our first Dual-Processor motherboard review has been in the making for quite some time. Why? So that we could bring you a thorough review of this board, and of the Dual-processor technology as well. Our first review is based on one of the most readily available motherboards out there that can handle multiple CPUs, and that's Tyan's S1832DL Tiger 100.

First off, here's why this board was chosen for this review. It covers what I feel to be the basics needed today when looking for a motherboard: ATX design, 5 PCI slots, 4 DIMM slots, AGP, and the ability to support PII/PIII & Celeron CPUs. And of course, that SECOND Slot 1 slot for that extra CPU-lovin'.

The Review:

Installing this board was painless. Of course, with today's cases with all their removable board trays, wider openings and rounder, safer edges, installing a motherboard can't get much easier. First items to hit this board once mounted in it's new home were a pair of P2-350s (more on this later). Configuring CPUs on this board is a mix of jumpers (for multiplier) and BIOS settings (for the clock speed). As the board came to me, it supports 66, 75, 83, 100, 112, and 124 bus speed, but a newer flash upgrade yet to be added here brings in the 133 bus. No voltage tweaking here unfortunately. A pair of unbranded 128 MB SDRAM sticks followed shortly, and I was pumped. Finishing the rest of the hardware installation seemed to drag on, as I was anxious to get this baby screaming. Then I was finally ready for my OS of choice: Windows NT 4.0 Workstation.

Loading up the OS was a breeze. I decided not to deal with the whole issue of trying to install the OS on a partition larger than 8.4 GB, so I opted for a 4.3 UW Seagate attached to an Adaptec 2940 UW SCSI controller card; and why not? This workhorse deserves the best! Now I couldn't tell you how long the OS took to load up, because I had my nose in the more-than-adequate manual that came with this board. Once the OS was up, on to the Service Packs. One by one, from 3 through 6a, I installed them all, one at a time. Not a problem. Everything went in smoothly, as it should, on a newly formatted system with hardly anything more than an OS loaded on it. Once 6a went on, on went a slew of other products: MS Office 2000, IE 5.01, and of course, Quake 3 Arena.

Between Q3A and this next step, many hours must have gone by. With a 2nd CPU, you don't see better graphics in this beautiful game, but you do get a more consistent performance level. But now back to the installed CPU's, the Dual P2-350's. The reason I opted for these to begin with was to simulate an upgrade. I'm sure someone, somewhere, will ask "Anything I need to do/know to replace some P2's with some P3's without screwing up my system?", so here goes. I powered down the system, pulled out the more-than-adequate CPU's occupying the motherboard, and in went a pair of Dual P3-500's. The older P2's were fairly easy enough to pull out, but the positioning of the CPUs in relation to the AGP Video Card could have been improved. The CPUs run in parallel starting millimeters away from the video card upwards. The AGP card didn't appear in the way of getting those CPUs in or out, but the heat coming off the card or CPUs probably isn't welcomed on its neighboring component. A simple flip of a couple of jumpers, and I was ready to go. This would have been better done through the BIOS, but seeing as how the case had to be opened for the CPUs, and the switches were easy to get to, it wasn't that bad a deal. I fired up the system and right away I was greeted with an opening screen letting me know that I was running an Intel Pentium 3 500 X2 CPU(s). NT came up not too long after that, it too acknowledging that yes, we still had 2 CPUs onboard. And voila, we were ready to go. As it stands now, this board can handle PIII CPUs up to 600 MHZ, but only those with a marking of "F" or higher can handle the newer PIII Coppermine CPUs.

I then proceeded to install some extra hardware. After all, we don't want a basic system, we want a rocking system, and we want to make sure all these rocking components will go together, and not give you fits in the process. In went a Creative Labs SB Live!, SMC PCI network card, a pair of 13 GB Maxtor IDE Drives, a SCSI Pioneer DVD drive, a Yamaha 4416 SCSI CD Writer, and a Real Magic Hollywood + DVD Decoder card. By the time I had rounded up all the drivers and installed the necessary software to make these components part of the system, I had no conflicts and no compatibility problems. For good measure, I threw in an additional 256 MB of SDRAM (2 sticks of 128s) to fill the banks. Again, not a problem. I wanted to try this as it seems that sometimes a motherboard can't handle having all of it's DIMM slots filled. By adding this RAM, I realized that the DIMM banks could have been better positioned, as the IDE cables were making it a little tight to slap the RAM in. I had to slide the motherboard tray about 2 inches to get enough room to make this RAM upgrade. Not the hardest thing to do, but definitely the 'quick' upgrade I was looking for. Taking the RAM out was easier. Seeing that you don't have to use as much precision to unlatch and pull away, both extra pieces came out with little problem.

Next came some overclocking tests on this setup. Entered the BIOS, and found the clock speed settings. Wouldn't post with a bus speed of 112, but was fine with a bus speed of 103. I pulled some of the RAM out, and was able to go to 112. This could be a result of the additional RAM not liking this faster bus, or the fact that the case had been opened allowing all to cool for a bit helped. Running at 112/560 per CPU, I was able to let this run for several hours, and reboot a couple more times to make sure I could still get in. Next came 124, and no go. I could post, but the system would hang trying to load the OS. Installed the latest BIOS upgrade (warning: doing this may not let older P2 CPUs from running on this board). Other than adding more ACPI support, Windows 2000, 600 mhz Katmai CPUs, it also added the 133 mhz bus speed option. I had to try this, but just like the 124 bus, no go. I have ordered some PC133 RAM and better cooling fans for the CPUs, lookout for an update on this!

Next, we should be showing you some benchmarks. Unfortunately, everything designed out there to do benchmarks is still a little behind in the times: no SMP support ANYWHERE! So stay tuned to this page for the next couple of days. To give you an idea of what SMP can do, we will run some SMP-capable applications on this system, with & without the 2nd CPU, as well as everybody's favorite, Quake III Arena.

Final Thoughts:

This is a more-than capable board for home or server use. It's easy enough to setup at home, and definitely very stable running at spec or a bit higher. Although it is no match for Abit's BP6 when it comes to overclocking, keep in mind that if you want Pentium 3 chips instead of Celerons, for now, this board has the advantage. If/when it is proven that the BP6 can do Coppermines, then Tyan will really have some catching up to do (Tyan, Are you listening???). Overall, I am satisfied with this piece of hardware. Even though there are jumpers instead of an All-BIOS setup, or that the IDE/Floppy cables can be in the way of some RAM upgrades, I did keep in mind that, even though I consider myself a power user, once the system is setup, I rarely end up playing with the hardware in the box. The software on the other hand….. If you're looking for something that allows you to use the cheaper Celerons, and allows you to overclock your brains out, this isn't for you. But if you're a system admin, and you need a server that's reliable and running on P2s or P3 CPUs, then this one is for you.