Tyan has long been known for
top quality motherboards, but mainly for the server / workstation
type machine. When they finally decided to take a swing at the
mainstream consumer board, some were disappointed because they
didn’t seem to put the same amount of quality into them. Well,
ladies and gentleman, I think that is old news. Tyan indeed does
produce high quality motherboards, and even the Trinity 371 S1857 as
a consumer model shares this quality.

As I like to do with every
motherboard review I do, let’s address the layout and features here.
While some people like to drown you in benchmarks, the truth is that
the motherboard does not have a hell of a lot to do with
performance. Stability, yes. But, actual performance is not affected
majorly by the board.

Feature-wise, the board is not
lacking. This board has both a Slot 1 and PPGA 370 interface for the
CPU, although both cannot be used at the same time. 6 PCI slots mean
that you should have plenty of space for all of those cards. It has
1 ISA slot for your old modem. The board can support the new 133 Mhz
bus speed, although there is a note that although the board supports
it that neither Tyan nor Intel recommend it. The feature is more for
the speed-freaks, and the reason they don’t officially recommend it
is because the Intel 440BX chipset was only designed for 100MHz and
the 133 MHz speed is effectively overclocking the chipset.

The layout is quite good. In fact,
I couldn’t really find anything major wrong with it. Unlike some
boards, this one isn’t loaded down with capacitors and the ones it
does have are located on a side of the Slot 1 interface that would
not interfere with a CPU fan. The three memory slots are placed just
high enough to clear any AGP card you could throw in that slot.
Jumpers J10 through J13, the ones used for changing the bus speed
and multiplier, are located out in the open so that you could adjust
the settings without removing any hardware. The settings themselves,
besides being in the manual, are printed on the PCB. The most common
CPU speeds are shown in three separate charts on the PCB. Some of
this data is printed a little too close to the Slot 1 so users with
a big CPU fan like my Celeron Arctic Cap fan can’t see the charts.
Tyan should, for purposes of ease, print this chart closer to the
J10-J13 jumper set and without splitting it up.

Performance is fine. I was running
an old Celeron 266 in it. I ran some WinStone 99 tests through it as
well as bootMark and some games and it tested fine. I also
overclocked it to 400Mhz using the 100Mhz bus speed ( I didn’t have
any 133MHz memory) and it ran stable. Once you figure out the BIOS
screens, you can really manipulate the board quite well. It had a
setting for bus speed that was set at Auto and wouldn’t allow me to
overclock the Celeron. Once I changed this to 100MHz, the thing
overclocked fine. AMI BIOS is a little different than the AWARD BIOS
I’m used to. Although I haven’t yet had a chance to test the 133 MHz
memory speed, the board seems quite stable. I should also mention
that Tyan boards are known to be a little picky with memory.
Although I had no trouble with AZZO memory, which isn’t really
well-known, I would pay attention to the manufacturer of your memory
before using a Tyan board.

The manual is very detailed as a
manual should be. In fact, I liked the manual for having all the
info it needed but still being simple to read.

Pros:

Stable
Compatible w/ just about
everything
Well laid out
Nice performance
6 PCI slots
Nice documentation

Cons:

Can’t use Socket 370 and Slot 1
at same time
Imprinted charts on PCB in weird places

So, obviously there are more
pros than cons with this board. The Trinity 371 is a great all-around
ATX motherboard that is for both the Slot 1 processor and the Socket
370 Celeron. No major complaints, nice performance, and
stable.

Manufacturer: Tyan Computer
Web Site: http://www.tyan.com
Product Link: http://www.tyan.com/products/html/s1857.html

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