Motherboard w/ ECC?

[Terry R. Friedrichsen]

> How important is ECC ram for a FreeBSD server?

My attitude is that ECC is only as important as your data, regardless of
what kind of machine you're running on.



> We've gone with Asus 
> motherboards in the past, but most new ones don't support ECC...

The only Asus Athlon motherboard I'm aware of that actually *uses* ECC
is the A7M266-D dual-processor board with the AMD 760MPX chipset.  I'd
be happy to hear of others.

There are other motherboards (particularly VIA chipset boards) that
"support" ECC by ignoring the ECC bits.  So support translates into
"our board will run anyway, even if you put ECC memory in it".



> If ECC is important, any recommendations for a motherboard that supports
> AMD Athlon + ECC?

I'm using the above-mentioned ASUS board quite successfully.

All of the Athlon 64 CPUs, of course, support ECC because the memory con-
troller is built into the processor chip.  So that's a good way to go, if
you don't mind spending more for the processor.  My current favorite is the
Asus K8V-Deluxe.

However, you still have to watch out for motherboards that don't carry the
ECC information to the processor.  For example, the Shuttle SN85G4 manages
not to support ECC despite having an A64 CPU ...

Terry R. Friedrichsen

terry at uplift.sunquest.com