Tyan S1836S Thunder 100 BX Dual Pentium II Board

• Number of Universal Serial Bus Root Ports: 2

• USB IRQ Enable/Disable in BIOS: Yes

• USB Keyboard Support in BIOS: Yes

• USB Legacy Keyboard Emulation: Yes

Recommended SDRAM

Recommended SDRAM: Mushkin CAS-2 PC100 SDRAM; Memory Man PC100 SDRAM
SDRAM Tested: 1 x 64MB Mushkin CAS-2 PC100 SDRAM; 1 x 64MB Memory-Man PC100 SDRAM

Manufacturer: Mushkin Memory
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.mushkin.com

Manufacturer: The Memory Man
Purchase Web-Site: http://www.memory-man.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 98 & 3D Winbench 98 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

• All video tests were conducted using an AGP video accelerator

• 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 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color

• 3D Winbench 98 tests were double buffered and conducted at 800 x 600 x 16-bit color

The Final Decision

If you find yourself looking to build a new system that doesn't have to be the world's best overclocker, yet you happen to need an Ethernet card and at least a SCSI controller (forget about using the on-board sound, just shell out the extra cash and buy a real sound card, it's not like you don't have the PCI slots for one) then the Tyan S1836DLUAN Thunder 100 is probably the motherboard you've been looking for.  Geared towards future expansion this board does it all, and with the Thunder 100 Pro boasting Ultra2 SCSI support it looks like Tyan may have just addressed a market very few manufacturers thought existed.