Opteron Vs. Athlon X2

[Mark Hahn]

> The differences between 939 pin opterons and amd64's are from what
> I can tell only clock speed and cache.  

there are some which apparently have the same pinout, clock, cache.
I didn't check to see whether they have the same rev, though (sse3?)

> S939 opterons and S939 amd64's use non-registered memory.  They support
> ECC, but many motherboards seem not to support it.  On the ones I've
> checked the manual nor bios mentioned ECC.  Additionally in other manuals
> I've seen that ECC "works" but doesn't provide ECC functionality.

the tyan S2866 appears to be a fairly normal s939 which 
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8esli.html

the manual definitely presents ECC options and even shows 'enabled'
as the reccomended/default.

this board looks pretty nice - anyone have experience with it?

the S2866G3NR model even has integrated video, and avoids the 
3-stack of audio connectors that prevent some boards fitting 1U.
even has IPMI support, though some people might shed a tears 
about multiple nics on a 32x33 PCI

and on weekends, you can use NV SLI on it ;)

actually, now that I look, the supermicro H8SSL-i also definitely
supports ECC (and might have a slightly nicer LAN config.)

for sheer obsessive completeness, I also checked the manual for 
the asus a8n5x - unquestionably a desktop-oriented board.  it also 
appears to have a working ECC config option, though it defaults off.

regards, mark hahn.