Tyan BX Socket-370 Tomahawk BX

Here we have a clash of two worlds that don't seem to belong with one another, a low-cost and supposedly low-end motherboard standard, Socket-370, and a definitely high-cost and high-end motherboard manufacturer, Tyan.  Those who cannot afford to put down the major cash to purchase Tyan's high-end workstation boards always hope to have a bit of Tyan's excellence in the motherboards they can afford, however what happens when a company that is so used to making high-end server motherboards runs into a demand for a low-end Socket-370 boards?

Ideally, this would end up in a revolution of the low-end motherboard market, where Tyan would bring all of the stability, features, and jazz from the high-end market down to the level where Socket-370 motherboard owners could enjoy it.   If this were an idealistic market, then maybe, but as you all know, the reality of the matter is often times quite the opposite...

New Anand Tech Report Card Rating
83/C

The Good

The nature of the S1856 dictates that it won't be used as a high-end workstation or server motherboard, meaning that there is no need for a full set of 4 DIMM slots.  For this reason the S1856 is outfitted with 3 DIMM slots, capable of accepting up to 768MB of total system memory.  AnandTech's SDRAM compatibility test indicated that our 256MB Corsair test modules would not work reliably in the motherboard, so the realistic expectation for the motherboard is 384MB of total system memory using 128MB SDRAM sticks.  Chances are that someone who purchases a $100 Celeron processor isn't going to spend six times that price on a 256MB stick of memory.  Not too big of a penalty for Tyan here, just cutting costs.

The board features a fully jumpered setup, however the beauty of the Celeron processor is that the clock multiplier is already locked on the processor's end, and the motherboard does an auto-detect (by default) of the CPU's official FSB speed therefore eliminating the need for you to even touch a jumper when configuring the motherboard.  The board could be set for a 3X clock multiplier, and your Celeron 433 would still run at 433MHz, simply because the clock multiplier is a function of the CPU, not the motherboard.  The S1856 does feature a jumper to control the status of the B21 pin on the Celeron CPU, setting the FSB detection to either auto-detect, force 66MHz or force 100MHz.  While the latter setting won't be officially needed until the 100MHz FSB Celerons are released, owners of the Celeron 300A may want to play around with it to see if their processors will boot at 450MHz.

The initial setup and configuration process is further simplified by Tyan's utterly incredibly User's Manual.  As mentioned in the Tyan Thunderbolt review, the User's Manual proves to be an excellent utility for the first time system-builder.  Its high quality step by step pictures help with the setup and installation of the basic components on your motherboard, including the CPU and memory.   The 83 page User's Manual provides a useful glossary section containing a few buzzwords and their respective definitions in addition to an error code dictionary, once again, extremely helpful if you've never approached a bare motherboard before.

Tyan's BIOS setup does allow for the overclocking of the FSB frequency of the board to a decent extent.  The important settings when dealing with a non-300A Celeron processor are the 75MHz and 83MHz FSB frequencies, which the S1856 had no problems with hitting.  For 300A owners that are looking to try their luck, in addition to the 100MHz FSB, the S1856 provides the 112MHz option which may come in handy if your processor is fortunate enough to be stable at 504MHz.

Performance is no longer an issue with the latest wave of BX motherboards.  During the days of the TX chipset, motherboard manufacturers were still experimenting with configuring their motherboards with the best combination of stability and performance, and back then an individual manufacturer could be crowned as being the fastest performer.  However today, if a motherboard manufacturer tries to sell you some PR junk of them being the fastest performer out of a motherboard roundup, smile and walk away.  A motherboard's primary assets are not its performance, as every average motherboard will perform within a few percent of its competitors, the points which you need to consider are features, stability, and quality.