rec.autos.simulators

Hi , i seen someone had mentioned something about TYAN motherboards..I
currently have a Packard Bell P-100, get poor results with the
Intergraph card..well just having the packard bell m/b is making sick..
I am going to use my P-100 intel chip and want to buy a real
motherboard, one that I can actually use and upgrade.  I kinda have my
eye on the Tyan Tomcat I- primarily because of the 5 ISA slots/4 PCI
slots...also 4 Hard drives/ 2 flopy drives controller.  Does anyone
have  any experience with this kind of mb?? espiecially with the
Intergraph Reactor card???  Any other suggestions would also be
appreciated!!

--
        "He who fights with monsters might take care,
                lest he thereby become a monster.
                And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
                the abyss gazes also into you."
        -Freiedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"

            ******Chris and Lesley Kolling******

      ******HOME PAGE :http://www.racesimcentral.net/~vampyre/ *****
   **LESLEY'S BARBIE PAGE: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~vampyre/barbie.htm**

Although I don't have the Tomcat, I do own two Tyan Titan III motherboards.
These have the Intel FX chipset, and give very good performance. Tyan will
usually post BIOS and bus mastering updates fairly often. I understand that
the Tomcat I is one of the fastest Intel HX motherboards available. Both of
the PC's that are using the Tyan Titan III also have an Intergraph Reactor
installed, and I have had no problems. I would definately recommend this
combo.

Hope this helps-

Eric Giles

:>Hi , i seen someone had mentioned something about TYAN motherboards..I
:>currently have a Packard Bell P-100, get poor results with the
:>Intergraph card..well just having the packard bell m/b is making sick..
:>I am going to use my P-100 intel chip and want to buy a real
:>motherboard, one that I can actually use and upgrade.  I kinda have my
:>eye on the Tyan Tomcat I- primarily because of the 5 ISA slots/4 PCI
:>slots...also 4 Hard drives/ 2 flopy drives controller.  Does anyone
:>have  any experience with this kind of mb?? espiecially with the
:>Intergraph Reactor card???  Any other suggestions would also be
:>appreciated!!

I have the Tomcat 1 with a Reactor (actually, I'm running two systems setup
that way).  Works great.  Make sure ALL of your PCI cards comply with the 2.1
spec, or DMA performance could suffer.

/*===================================================*/
 There are three types of lies...
   lies, damn lies, and press releases.

 John Simmons (Redneck Techno-Biker)
 remove the *:)* characters from my address to email me                                
 http://www2.connectnet.com/~jms/  
/*===================================================*/

I am using the Tyan Titan VX MB, very fast MB. With the latest Bios
upgrade Tyan indicates "*When using SDRAMs, the Titan VX should
outperform the Tomcat" (I did see a noticable speed increase with the
V3.0 bios and I am using SDRAM).   However, I am not using the the
mentioned video card (using matrox millium 4mg) and cannot unless it
becomes supportable under Linux...   NCR2 WILL NOT RUN ON MY
SYSTEM.....
Regardless of the NCR2 issue,,,I would recommend this MB. Compared to
a Gateway2000 P133 my Tyan P133 seems NOTICEABLY faster to me. IMHO
Tyan would be a good selection.

The Tomcat has the 430FX chipset vs the Titan VX wich used the 430VX
chipset. From reading other posts, It seems the FX chipset would be
the desirable chipset ??

I bought a Tomcat III (the replacement for the Tomcat I) and a Reactor
card together about a month ago. The system worked great out of the box
and I was really happy with it. About a week ago someone on this list
mentioned the alt.comp.mainboard.tyan (something like that) newsgroup
and how there has been a problem with 'poor' DMA results with the Tyan
boards. I've been monitoring the newsgroup ever since and it seems that
the current bios for the Tomcat III doesn't have support to tweek the
DMA transfer rates. If you want to tweek your system to get the maximum
performance, the ASUS boards seem to get praise on the tyan newsgroup
(go figure).

I have had second thoughts about my Tyan purchase, but overall I'm
definitely happy with everything. I don't run Nascar 2 (yet) so I
haven't experienced the problems people are having with slow DMA
transfers, but Indycar II and GP2 run good enough (considering I was
upgrading from a 486) that I'm not complaining...

Keith Richmond

:>
:>The Tomcat has the 430FX chipset vs the Titan VX wich used the 430VX
:>chipset. From reading other posts, It seems the FX chipset would be
:>the desirable chipset ??

Actually, the Tomcat's have the HX chipset, and yes, it's the more desireable
chipset.

/*===================================================*/
 There are three types of lies...
   lies, damn lies, and press releases.

 John Simmons (Redneck Techno-Biker)
 remove the *:)* characters from my address to email me                                
 http://www2.connectnet.com/~jms/  
/*===================================================*/

The FX is the old Triton I chipset and really has nothing going for it.
 The HX chipset is the fastest, but it does not support SDRAM like the
VX.  If you are in the market for new RAM, it really doesn't make much
sense to keep buying EDO.  The upcoming 430TX chipset (designed for the
P55c MMX Pentiums) will also use SDRAM.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

            ******Chris and Lesley Kolling******

      ******HOME PAGE :http://shoga.wwa.com/~vampyre/ *****
   **LESLEY'S BARBIE PAGE: http://shoga.wwa.com/~vampyre/barbie.htm**

Yeah, I have an old tyan Titan III (p-133) and it gets 67 MB/sec when
tested with DMADIAG. I saw some people posting in there that were only
getting around 38 MB/sec with one of the newer Tyan Tomcat boards (I
really can't remember the exact model number).

Neither BIOS has PCi latency settings, which can be used to boost DMA
performance with the Verite cards.
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Hi thanks to all your help so far....I am now leaning towards the Tyan
Titan VX, esentially the same as the Tomcat.  The titan has the VX
chipset, supports SDRAM (although too expensive right now, but nice to
upgrade later), costs $159 from TC computers.  The main other difference
that I noticed is that the Titan VX has only 4 ISA slots, rather than
the 5 of the Tomcat (the only one that I seen that has 5 ISA slots).
        Does anyone have any input on the Titan VX over the Tomcat???
I mainly use the machine for ***..Nascar2, Quake, Duke Nukem
3-D..etc.I have the Intergraph Reactor 3-D video card
        thanks, chris
--
        "He who fights with monsters might take care,
                lest he thereby become a monster.
                And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
                the abyss gazes also into you."
        -Freiedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil"

            ******Chris and Lesley Kolling******

      ******HOME PAGE :http://www.racesimcentral.net/~vampyre/ *****
   **LESLEY'S BARBIE PAGE: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~vampyre/barbie.htm**

If you're not getting SDRAM now, the VX is not a good choice.  Even
with SDRAM it's no faster than the HX boards and with EDO it's slower.
Considering you may upgrade again in the near future to the upcoming
430TX chipset (AGP, SDRAM, USB, etc.), there's no sense using an
inferior VX board in the mean time.   Keep your EDO and get an HX
aboard like the Asus P55T2P4 Rev 3.1 or Abit IT5H, or make the switch
to SDRAM (you'll need to make the switch eventually) and get a VX
board.

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://www.racesimcentral.net/~ebusch/

I've seen it for sale at various retailers on the web.  It lacks the
83mhz bus speed, but apparently it is faster than the ASUS.  A real
cool feature is that it lacks jumpers and dipswitches on the board.
Everything is set in the BIOS including the bus speed, multiplier, CPU
voltage, etc.

Off the top of my head try: http://www.ram-ware.com/

--

Emory University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The IWCCCARS Project: Q & A Representative
Nascar Setups Page: http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~ebusch/

Be warned.  I tried the VX board and it sucks with the Reactor card.  
(37-39Mb/sec)

-Andy