Chaintech?

drasnordrasnor Starship OperatorHawthorne, CA Icrontian
edited November 2003 in Hardware
I posted earlier this week in the Folding forum that the dual MP was down with a video card failure. Apparently that wasn't the case...

My Tyan TigerMP has breathed its last. He's toast, and I need a new Athlon MP board.

Can anyone think of a reason why not to get the Chaintech 7KDD? The Gigabyte board is slightly cheaper on Newegg, but I know we all hate Gigabyte here. If y'all can come up with a convincing reason not to use the Chaintech, I'll go ahead and get the Tyan TigerMPX, but I'm interested to hear your opinions.

-drasnor :fold:

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    You going to be overclocking?

    I've found that Chaintech's boards are generally pretty stable, reliable boards, but they don't overclock real well from what I hear.

    The promise onboard RAID on it is supposed to be crap, tho.

    IMO, MSI's K7D boards are the best 760MPX boards there are.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Probably not going to be overclocking, but thanks for the hot tip on the RAID. I was browsing NewEgg for my dual MP needs, and the MSI board wasn't listed so I figured it didn't exist. Anyway, I'll look into the K7D (looking good so far though).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3440953242&category=31496

    Not a K7D-L (the -L has onboard intel 10/100 LAN) but...
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    These people are listed with the Better Business Bureau, and not in the negative sense like all the other people on PriceWatch.

    http://www.accupc.com/itemDetail.jsp?pid=MBMS6501030

    -drasnor :fold:
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited November 2003
    http://www.resellerratings.com/seller4501.html
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Hrmmmm. I may have jumped to a dead motherboard conclusion. I've got a Shuttle nForce2-400 board here and I've been testing the CPU's one at a time by trying to boot the test system into Knoppix. CPU0 did ok, but CPU1...

    What does a dying CPU look like? The system intermittently won't boot at all, and when the CD is booting it takes much longer than usual and then starts returning a gazillion read errors.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    That sounds like it's definitely got a problem. I'm sorry to hear the proc's bad but at least if it's the problem you won't have to replace the board.
    Have you tried booting the board with just the good CPU in it to see if it will boot at all?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    I've pulled both Athlon MP 2000+ processors from my Tyan TigerMP board, and I've been testing them one at a time in a test Shuttle nForce2-400 board I got at Frys.

    I got my first Athlon MP 2000+ to boot knoppix just fine in the shuttle board, but the same rig with my second Athlon MP will either not POST (no video), start booting knoppix and then return a hojillion I/O errors where Linux is coughing on corrupted data from the CD, or just flat out crash. I got it to boot into DOS from a floppy though, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    Yeah, DOS isn't as memory intensive.
    I'd still try booting the MP board with the good CPU in it to make certain that it's ok and to check to see if maybe it's not the reason that the 2nd CPU is acting like it is now.
    If you have an old duron laying around that you're not afraid of killing if it does turn out that the board is in fact the reason the 2nd CPU is dying I'd suggest using it in each socket to boot into knoppix one at a time.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    I've got a fresh pair of AthlonXP 1900's from NewEgg for that exact purpose. Dad accidentally got XP's, needed MP's. I'm not voiding their warranties, since I don't want to have them around in 30 days ;)

    That dead MP still ought to be under warranty. It was retail-boxed.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    Sweet deal. I sure hope that the board is ok.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    I'm not getting any joy with an Athlon XP in either socket (no POST, no video). I don't think the Tiger MP runs in single-processor configurations, since it isn't listed as being compatible with Athlon XP's according to Tyan, though the Tiger MPX is. The Athlon XP has not been unlocked and probably won't be (plan to return it soon).

    Any thoughts?

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    I just got off of Tyan's web site and it will run a single proc so try to boot it with the good CPU in the socket it was in to begin with and go from there.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    We have used both the Tyan and Giga mobo at work in servers. We have had every onboard raid controler quit working correctly. The Giga mobo worked, but our hardware guy is moving to the MSI.

    Sounds like you have a memmory controler on a cpu going away. Three chears for warranty.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Could you link me to where you found it using a single processor on the Tyan site? I checked CPU compatibility and the manual and it didn't say anything in that regard, and a Google search turned up a single instance of someone using a single MP1600.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    It says on the main page for that board "For use with up to 2 Athlon MP processors" which means it will run either one or two.
  • madmatmadmat
    edited November 2003
    From the Tyan site under spec.s for the tiger mp
    "Processor
    • Dual PGA462 ZIF sockets
    • Supports up to two AMD Athlon MP processors
    • Two onboard VRMs
    • Front-Side Bus support for 266/200MHz"
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2003
    drasnor, I have a Chaintech CT-7KDD mobo I got off Newegg's refurbs for $119 and that was a great investment. The board is mucho stable and I'm overclocking 2 Tbred B's, 1 an older XP2400 and the other an XP2100 to 2208 MHz. I hard coded a 16 multi on both and no problems. Geeky is right in that it isn't much of an overclocker's board as there is no vcore, vdimm or multiplier adjustments either in bios or by jumper. I just hard coded my vcore on the procs themselves. The board has enough room around the sockets to mount a Swifty MCX462+ and a SLK900A and it has the 4 mounting holes around each socket too, if you want to watercool it. I just use the Promise Lite as another IDE port and have 1 hard drive connected, so I can't say how good or bad the RAID functions of it are. It also has working usb 1.1 ports via the southbridge and usb 2.0 ports via an added chip on the mobo. The manual that comes with it sucks donkey balls though, but since you've set up MPX boards before you won't have any problems. Also this board uses all 3 of the connectors; the ATX(obviously:rolleyes2 ), the 12v and the 3/5v P4 connectors and the rails are rock solid. No onboard lan though.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    Ok, the board won't POST with a single MP either. I'm going to try to RMA the board, but Tyan seems to want me to go through whoever I got it from, which would be one of my buddies, and he got it from NewEgg I believe. The dead AthlonMP is getting RMA'd to either Googlegear or AMD, depending on what the warranty card says (as soon as I find it). If NewEgg or Tyan won't take the TigerMP back, I'll look again at getting another motherboard.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited November 2003
    I just looked and monarch computers has the non-L version of the KD7-Master for $179 and free shipping. They are highly rated at resellerratings.com too.
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