Tyan's Tiger MP: Affordable Multiprocessing

Proprietary Standards: No one really likes them

As impressive as the Tyan Thunder K7 was, it was clear that the board would not take the Athlon MP processor and 760MP chipset mainstream.  In fact, it wouldn't even make a dent in Intel's stronghold on the dual processor (2P) workstation and server markets.  The board and platform in general was deemed interesting by companies like Hewlett Packard, but those very same companies went on to produce 2P Xeon systems and not Athlon MP solutions.  Obviously there are other factors that play into decisions like that, but the Thunder K7 did play its share of roles.

One of the biggest problems over the assimilation of the Thunder K7 into many commercial systems and even among enthusiasts was the very unique power supply requirement.  The 450 – 460W power requirement of the motherboard wasn't too unreasonable considering the market it was targeted at, but the proprietary connector was.  There isn't a single manufacturer that feels too comfortable committing to a platform that can be powered by one of three power supplies.  Even Tyan didn't approve of the use of a proprietary connector pin-out on the Thunder K7; apparently it was AMD's decision which has since been changed that caused it.

Everyone loves standardization; the Tiger MP features a standard 20-pin ATX power connector

Needless to say that the first problem the Tiger MP fixes is the requirement of a special power supply.  The board itself features an industry standard 20-pin ATX power connector with the same pinout on the thousands of other ATX motherboards out there.  Like all Socket-A motherboards, there are some stricter power delivery requirements that the power supply must meet.  The standard set of AMD recommended power supply guidelines apply as well as two additional specifications set forth by AMD and Tyan.  The +3.3V power rail must be capable of delivering at least 3A of current and the +5V power rail must deliver at least 30A of current.  The importance of these two ratings is that these lines are what supply power to the motherboard and the CPU(s).  As with most of our tests, we used a 300W Sparkle (Model Number FSP300-60GT) power supply.  This power supply met the 30A delivery requirement on the +5V rail and exceeded the 3A minimum on the +3.3V by providing 14A of current at 3.3V.