Motherboard w/ ECC?

[Dan Strick]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 13:34:06 -0500, Rob Ellis wrote:
>>
> How important is ECC ram for a FreeBSD server? We've gone with Asus
> motherboards in the past, but most new ones don't support ECC...
>
> If ECC is important, any recommendations for a motherboard that supports
> AMD Athlon + ECC?
>>

If a system handles data that you really don't want corrupted, then
some sort of memory error detection is very important.  You really
need to know if something in your system is damaging your data so
that you can fix it.  Unless you have extreme uptime requirements,
the difference between parity and ECC is less important, but simple
parity support is less common these days so your only option is ECC.
I highly recommend it.  When the integrity of *my* data is at stake,
I pretty much insist on it.

I am only familiar with recent single processor P4 motherboards using
either the Intel 865 or 875 support chipsets.  The 875 supports ECC.
The 865 does not.  I use a motherboard with the 875 chipset and 1 GB
of ECC memory.  It seems to work just fine, but experience with just
one system for only several months may not count for much.

I don't know much about other brands of chipsets or about multiprocessor
chipsets or about Athlon processors.

Dan Strick
strick at covad.net