Tyan Tempest i5000XL S2692

While the motherboard we were testing was a pre-production sample, its design, features, and performance blew us away. Once again, Tyan has delivered a remarkably well built motherboard. One of the only areas where the motherboard was lacking was with a single Gigabit LAN port where we would have liked to see at least two. While not exactly critical for a workstation, it would have been nice if there were also an integrated IEEE-1394 Firewire ASIC. The Tyan Tempest i5000XL S2692 supports dual LGA-771 sockets for use with Intel Xeon 5000 (Dempsey) and 5100 (Woodcrest) processors, FB-DIMM memory modules, PCI Express, and more. With the Intel Bensley platform expected to last through 2008, and support for the next three processor family introductions, the Tyan Tempest i5000XL S2692 is certainly a terrific investment. On top of the i5000XL there is the i5000XT, i5000VF, i5000VS, i5000PW, and i5000PX Tempest products. Tyan has stated that the Tempest i5000XL should begin appearing in retail channels in the very near future, but at this time we have yet to see any price quotes for the product.