Closer Look

Tachyon G9500 PRO comes into retail with the standard accessories set: S-Video and RCA cables, S-Video-to-RCA and DVI-I-to-D-Sub adapters, a software CD, and a user’s manual.

As you see, the PCB is azure-colored; the graphics chip and 128MB of graphics memory carry an impressive cooling system. Although based on ATI’s reference-design, the PCB differs from it in some ways. Thus, this PCB is longer, the power supply connector is shifted to the back of the card, and there is no wiring for a multi-pin connector we saw in the original PCB of RADEON 9500 PRO.

The placement of memory chips is quite ordinary for RADEON 9500 Pro and indicates that you can’t restore the 256-bit memory bus by any modifications. Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO looks very neat, nothing is missing on the PCB. The heatsinks of the graphics chip and memory chips are fastened with special spring latches, granting both simple and effective contact. Between the heatsinks and the chips there is a layer of thermal glue. Memory chips from Hynix are marked as HY5DU283222F and have 3.6ns access time. It’s rather slow to hope for good overclocking. Under the graphics chip cooler we found a layer of some yellowish thermal interface. The copper brace around the chip is still there and if you are not going to use the original thermal interface, you will have to remove it to provide a tight contact between the die surface and the cooler foot. As practice showed, the thermal pad works perfectly well and there is no reason to put it off unless you are into extreme overclocking.

TGM 2.0: Highest Stability Comes First

As you can see in the snapshot, the fan is connected to the card by three wires, one of which serves to transfer tachometer data. Besides, the PCB carries a petal-shaped thermal diode, pressed against the memory heatsinks, appropriate logics (Winbond W83782D) and a small buzzer of the PC-Speaker type. That’s why the PCB is longer than that of the reference-card. All these are components of the new diagnostics system called TGM 2.0 (Tyan Graphics Monitor). The CD with software bundle included into the package of Tyan Tachyon G9500 PRO contains an utility to perform this diagnostics, but we chose to download a newer version from the developer’s site. We installed TGM 2.0, re-booted the computer and saw the following picture:

We found that this utility can track fan rotation speed, display graphics chip temperature, control chip and memory working frequencies, show the available graphics memory size, current AGP mode and driver version. Moreover, Tyan Graphics Monitor allows adjusting the fan rotation speed! If this option is enabled, you can click the Detail button and choose the Fan Speed parameter: you will see a slider below the rotation speed graph that allows adjusting fan rotation speed ranging from 3300 to 5500rpm. The monitoring system won’t overheat the graphics chip, though, and when the temperature reaches 60^oC, the rotation speed is automatically raised to the maximum.

Besides, if you set a value outside this range, that “PC-Speaker”-like thing emits a loud beep. In the page for this utility you can also read the voltage of the I/O circuits as well as voltage and temperature of the memory chips. Overall, Tyan did very well and equipped its Tachyon G9500 PRO with a well-thought monitoring and protection system. We saw mainboards with fewer capabilities. And we are glad to see such a tender loving care about the user!