Tyan Thunder K8S / AMD Opteron - 03/03/04


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You may have noticed a lack of Opteron coverage on 2CPU.com this far, but I assure that is all about to end. To kick off the gobs of upcoming K8 action, I would like to present to you the one and only Tyan Thunder K8S. Laden with onboard Ultra320 SCSI (not one, but TWO channels!), 6 slots worth of hardcore NUMA action, 133MHz PCI slots, even dual onboard gigabit NICs, it's got everything but the kitchen sink (and an AGP slot, but the K8W has to have *some* claim to fame). We'll be giving it a thorough beating in both the released and mainstream Windows 2003 enterprise edition for IA32 and the public beta of Windows 2003 for 64bit extended systems (I'll just say AMD64 from here on, I promise).

Specifications

  • Dual AMD Opterons at 248 (2.2GHz) or higher
  • AMD 8000 series chipset: AMD-8131 PCI-X tunnel and AMD-8111 I/O controller
  • 6 184-pin DIMM sockets, up to 12GB registered ECC DDR SDRAM at up to PC3200 speed
  • Integrated LSI Logic Ultra320 controller
  • Integrated 'dual channel' Broadcom gigabit etherent
  • Integrated ATI RageXL graphics controller with 8MB dedicated RAM, PCI connected
  • Promise PDC20378 controller providing two channels of SATA RAID and one ATA-133 channel
  • PXE boot support for the Broadcom BCM7504C, on both ports
  • 2x 133MHz PCI-X slots, 2x 100MHz PCI-X slots (shared with the onboard LSI Ultra320 controller), one 32bit 33MHz PCI slot

Layout



The first few times I looked at this board, all I could see was it's length. You had better double-check that your chassis can hold one of these, it occupies some serious real estate. That's pretty much a given any time you're messing with multiple CPUs and PCI-X, so it is not a black mark against Tyan; no space is wasted. The CPU sockets and RAM slots are very nicely placed, airflow from the front of a chassis to the rear won't have one CPU sucking down the other CPU's hot air. The primary power connector is right in the center of the board, though, and I can't see any easy way to route it. This might be a problem for those trying to put this board in a 2U or smaller rackmount. The board itself could probably work in a 1U enclosure, though. You will need standard or low profile RAM, but the I/O panel at the rear is fairly short, and the board doesn't have any clearance issues with tall components. All in all, a fantastic job with the board layout, excepting the primary EPS12V connector.

The four PCI-X slots are laid out nicely, with the two closest to the CPUs supporting a single PCI-X bus up to 133MHz, and the two towards the bottom of the board supporting only 66MHz operation, as the LSI Ultra320 controller is also on this bus. The single 32/33 'classic' PCI slot at the bottom is very handy, in case you have some nasty old 32/33 card you just can't live without. Tyan includes the standard loadout in the box with the TK8S, floppy and IDE cables, a very nice four position, self-terminated Ultra320 SCSI ribbon, but also two SATA data cables (in black, sweet) and a very nice 4 pin to SATA power adapter, with two plugs. You're fully equipped right out of gate, with everything you'll need to hook this board to any and all storage you have.