When dealing with motherboards it is a rarity that one finds a model manufactured or designed in the USA.  With the exception of Supermicro and a few smaller companies, most motherboards are produced and designed in Taiwan.  It is sort of like farming, in that as a farmer you wouldn't want to plant your crops in an area with poor soil, the same principle applies to the manufacturing and designing of motherboards.  The desire, need, and ability to manufacture/design motherboards as well as other Printed Circuit Boards (PCB's) is very high in Taiwan since just about 80% of the industry happens to be located there. 

Does this mean that motherboards designed of manufactured in the US are inherently poor in quality, performance or any other aspect for that matter?  Absolutely not.  When looking at Tyan's Tiger ATX - a LX based Pentium II motherboard you immediately notice Tyan's use of the prominent "Designed in USA" text between two PCI slots, a very rare occurrence in motherboards today.   It looks like Tyan isn't ashamed of this accomplishment, actually there is no reason for them to feel ashamed, the Tyan Tiger ATX is one of the best Pentium II motherboards available today...AND...it doesn't feature any easy to use jumperless setup, doesn't support bus speeds greater than 66MHz, and tops out at a maximum CPU speed of 333MHz.  So what makes the Tyan Tiger ATX a knockout?  Good, old fashioned, quality.

---

Motherboard Specifications

 

---

The Good

First impressions are usually lasting ones, the Tyan Tiger ATX literally makes one HUGE lasting impression.  The large cylindrical monsters that encircle the Slot-1 on the Tiger ATX are not oddly shaped camera batteries, rather 7, oversized, one inch tall, 2200 micro-farad (the farad is the unit to measure electrical capacity, with capacitors, generally, the greater the capacity the more effective the capacitor - see Computer Hardware Info Guide) capacitors.  As a main function capacitors perform, these unique tubes store an electrical current, and by using them around critical areas of the motherboard, especially around heavily used Integrated Circuits (IC's) one can increase the overall stability/reliability of a motherboard.  Tyan proves to have virtually mastered the reliability aspect of motherboard manufacturing since the Tyan Tiger ATX ran flawlessly in a do-or-die test environment for a few days straight, during this time the test system was constantly under heavy use performing intense mathematical calculations in addition to the normal work load of any user. 

Although the 2 ISA slots may be discouraging to some potential buyers, you must realize that most newly released motherboards will have at most, 3 ISA slots, don't expect many boards produced this year to feature more than 2 ISA slots either.  The 5 PCI slots and 1 AGP slot make up for the 2 ISA, and the 4 DIMM slots ensure that one can easily take advantage of the Pentium II's 512MB cacheable memory area. 

The Tiger ATX does feature a few outstandingly unique qualities.  First of all the Voltage Regulator system on-board the S1692 is a real force to be reckoned with, accenting the large capacitors as an explanation for the Tiger's excellent stability (the dual processor Tiger - S1692D(L) features a dual voltage regulator setup).  Moreover, the Tiger ATX has an on-board PC Speaker, not sure why, but it can take the place of your case's PC speaker if you feel like that unit is occupying too much room, room which can be more efficiently used as room for another case fan. 

Tyan's user's manual is also among the best in the industry, although not as comprehensive as documentation from ABIT and Chaintech, the Tyan S1692 comes complete with more than enough information to get yourself up and running at 110% power, the user's manual even includes a detailed explanation of the Chipset Features setup, something most manuals lack.  Since the AMI WinBIOS auto-detects a great deal of settings it is often useless to waste time in the Chipset Features Setup, but there is no stopping a true tweaker from doing so to get the maximum performance out of his/her system.

Tyan's user's manual is also among the best in the industry, although not as comprehensive as documentation from ABIT and Chaintech, the Tyan S1692 comes complete with more than enough information to get yourself up and running at 110% power, the user's manual even includes a detailed explanation of the Chipset Features setup, something most manuals lack.  Since the AMI WinBIOS auto-detects a great deal of settings it is often useless to waste time in the Chipset Features Setup, but there is no stopping a true tweaker from doing so to get the maximum performance out of his/her system.

Configuring the motherboard using AMI's excruciatingly thorough yet easy to use WinBIOS setup can be a pain to some, however for the most part, this addition to the Tiger ATX's already powerful arsenal of features makes it a very intense competitor for that Best Pentium II motherboard award.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the AMI WinBIOS, it is basically a BIOS Setup utility designed to resemble Windows 3.1 in some respects.  The BIOS does enable mouse support, so you don't have to restrict yourself to a keyboard...not that using the keyboard is such an immense burden.  AMI tried to make the friendly interface of the WinBIOS Setup mask its powerful interior, but in reality, any way you put it, the AMI WinBIOS is much more difficult to configure than most AWARD BIOS Setup Utilities.  While some may find the WinBIOS more attractive, others are simply disgusted by it, if you happen to be one of those people I suggest you ditch the thought of buying the Tiger ATX and grab hold of a sweet ABIT LX6.

The Tiger ATX makes the terms reliability and stability an understatement in its case, this motherboard is by far one of the most stable motherboards that has been reviewed on this site, it is on par with the stability of the ABIT LX6,  and the Shuttle HOT-631 to name a few.  Performance-wise, the Tiger ATX seems to be an incredibly fast motherboard, while it isn't the fastest out today it certainly does have a certain power to its name, and as history has shown us, the motherboard that can produce the highest benchmarks isn't necessarily the best motherboard.

 

The Bad

Major problems with the Tyan Tiger ATX?   None...but here are two that can't be overlooked:

• No 75/83MHz bus speed support meaning the highest achievable clock speed is 333MHz

• Manual CPU Configuration, unlike most LX boards out today, the Tiger ATX doesn't feature a jumperless setup...its still not a bad motherboard though

 

---

IRQ Usage

• Auto-detects PnP Cards after HDD Detection

• Allows user to manually set DMA Channels/IRQs to PnP cards or Legacy ISA cards

 

---

BIOS Settings

Consult the Tyan Tiger ATX User's Manual for the best BIOS Settings, it is a VERY helpful piece of documentation.

 

---

Recommended SDRAM

This little addition to my review layout was put in here just so you all can have an idea of what brand of SDRAM I recommend and have tested with the board, just to avoid problems in the future if you decide to purchase the board.

Recommended SDRAM: Advanced Megatrends SDRAM, Corsair SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64 Advanced Megatrends SDRAM DIMMs, 1 x 64MB Corsair SDRAM DIMMs

Manufacturer: Advanced Megatrends
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.megacom.com

Manufacturer: Corsair Microsystems
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.nf-ny.com

The Test

In recent times, choosing a motherboard cannot be completely determined by a Winstone score. Now, many boards come within one Winstone point of each other and therefore the need to benchmark boards against each other falls. Therefore you shouldn't base your decision entirely on the benchmarks you see here, but also on the technical features and advantages of this particular board, seeing as that will probably make the greatest difference in your overall experience.

How I Tested

• Each benchmark was run a minimum of 2 times and a maximum of 5 times, if the motherboard failed to complete a single test within the 5 allocated test runs the OS/Software was re-installed on a freshly formatted Hard Drive and the BIOS settings were adjusted to prevent the test from failing again.  All such encounters were noted at the exact time of their occurrence.

• Business Winstone 97 / Business Graphics Winmark 97 was run at each individually tested clock speed, if reliable scores were achieved with the first two test runs of the suite an average of the two was taken and recorded as the final score at that clock speed.  If the test system displayed erratic behavior while the tests were running or the results were incredibly low/high the tests were re-run up to 5 times and an average of all the test runs was taken and recorded at the final score at that clock speed

• Business Winstone 98 / Business Graphics Winmark 98 was run on the Pentium MMX at 233MHz, and the AMD K6 at 233MHz, the averaging rules for these tests are the same as those used for the 97 test suites. 

• Business Winstone 98 was run on the Pentium II at 300MHz alone.

• After each motherboard was tested a complete format of the test hard drive was initiated and the OS/benchmarking software was re-installed afterwards a defragment was initiated using Windows 95's Disk Defragmentation Utility

• No foreign drivers were present in the test system other than those required for the system to function to the best of its ability

• All foreign installation files were moved to a separate partition during the test as to prevent them from effecting the test results

• All tests were conducted at 800 x 600 x 256 colors

Test Configuration

 

 

---

The Final Decision

As the first Tyan motherboard review on this page I can say that Tyan has done an impressive job with the Tiger ATX, and I look forward to testing more of their products in the near future.  If you're not too into overclocking (due to the lack of support for higher bus speeds) and you're simply looking for a down right decent motherboard, give the folks at Tyan a look over...examine the Tiger ATX, and give it a try.