Tyan Tiger ATX LX Pentium II Board

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