Tyan alternatives cuz their support totally sucks

[Martin Nilsson]

David O'Brien wrote:
>>I've always had good experiences with MSI boards/systems... generally well 
>>priced/featured and their support is pretty good.
> 
> 
> MSI's support of Opteron sucks terribly.  They have a strong track record
> of EOL'ing their Opteron boards by not providing BIOS support when new
> Opteron come out.  

That is also my experience with them, ask for a new BIOS and you'll 
never get a reply.

> Unless you really need 12 DIMM sockets on a dual-cpu
> (2 processor sockets) motherboard I would never buy an MSI.

With 8 DIMMs on one CPU you have to run the memory att DDR266 speed, 
with 6 DIMMS you get DDR333. The MSI BIOS is so stupid that you can't 
even force a lower speed, it always chooses the one in SPD. If you put 
8*DDR400 sticks on CPU1 you won't be able to use the box at all since it 
tries to run them att DDR400 which does not work.

If you mix DDR333 and DDR400 modules on one CPU the board tries to run 
them both on DDR400, which surprisingly does not work.

Also the MSI does not have IPMI support, it is listed in the manual but 
was discontinued before manufacturing.

Simply put this is not server class hardware, more like some "overgrown 
desktop toy system".

As a reseller we stick to the Supermicro A+ boards, they simply work, 
availability and support is also good.


/Martin