Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 02:35:19 -0600 From: "Jeffrey J. Mountin" <jeff-ml@mountin.net> To: Shawn Ramsey <shawn@cpl.net>, Jim King <jim@jimking.net>, Ed Henderson <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net> Cc: isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Good server motherboard? Message-ID: <4.3.2.20010323234111.029c0df0@207.227.119.2> In-Reply-To: <20010323165743.B57362@cpl.net> References: <001501c0b3f5$f40b8910$04e48486@marble> <001c01c0b3ea$df109920$0464a8c0@pnt004> <001501c0b3f5$f40b8910$04e48486@marble>
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At 04:57 PM 3/23/01 -0800, Shawn Ramsey wrote: >On Fri, Mar 23, 2001 at 06:04:09PM -0600, Jim King wrote: > > "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net> wrote: > > >I plan to use AMD Athlon chips, tower case, IDE drives/peripherals, > > >at least 256MB RAM. Budget is limited since we are just beginning: > > >approx. $1300 per server (not including tape drive which is seperate > > >see #3 below). Servers will host typical ISP apps: DNS, RADIUS, > > >mail, Apache, etc. > > > > When I looked a couple months ago none of the Athlon motherboards supported > > ECC memory. Considering the amount of potential grief you'll avoid by > using > > ECC memory I'd say that Athlon shouldn't be considered. :-( > > > > Jim > >Perhaps that was true then, certainly not now. Besides, I have never seen a >problem caused by using non-ECC memory. Thats not to say that ECC memory >shouldn't be used, but from what I have seen it is an unneccesary expense. >Though I do believe the most RAM you can currently get on an Athlon MB is >2GB, so if you need more than that your out of luck. The VIA KT133 does not support ECC and can support only 3 DIMMs for 1.5 GB of memory. The KX133 did support ECC and up to 4 DIMMS for 2 GB of memory. At least VIA did not continue with the lack of ECC support. The KT266 will support it and up to 4 GB. Of course PC DDR200/266 SDRAM (aka PC1600/2100) is a bit pricy. However the chipset can use PC133 SDRAM. Dependent on the MB of course. As for ECC, using it (or not) doesn't "cause" problems. It can detect and correct them and is highly recommended for servers, especially when filling memory to capacity. The same for using registered memory, which is required with many chipsets/boards when using more than 2 DIMMs. The price difference is small for the peace of mind should there be a problem with the memory. Ask anyone that has had to track down a memory problem or wonder why they cannot add a 3rd or 4th module when they didn't use registered memory. Of course with an Athlon system using the KT133 chipset you would be best served by using high quality memory, such as Micron. More so since ECC is not an option. Jeff Mountin - jeff@mountin.net Systems/Network Administrator FreeBSD - the power to serve To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
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