RE: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....
MSI-9131 and Arima HDAMA have both been good for us. One of our MSI's has 6gig of RAM, most of the rest of our systems have 4gig (or less).
From past personal experience with the Tyan 24XX (and other) boards, I'd stay away from Tyan. Supposedly Tyan boards are now OK (they won't just die after a few months to maybe 3 years) but I'd let someone else prove or disprove that supposition. The only other board line I've ever seen with a failure rate like Tyan's is PCChips.
I hate to be so negative about a line that has so many terrific looking board designs, but so it goes. Maybe our distributor happened to store their Tyan boards next to an industrial microwave oven with broke shielding, leaving the boxes pristine but mortally wounded components inside, and no one but us has had reliability problems with Tyan boards - but I doubt it. Tyan has been offering attractive designs for a long time. I remember an early dual Pentium (wouldn't support MMX, just Pentium) Tyan system that had a screwed up cache controller design limiting its effective memory support to 64 meg. At least that board didn't flat out fail after a year. They make some very appealing systems, because they're often the first (or the only) company to offer some configurations, but I know that I've learned to find something else, however appealing the Tyan may look. I'll probably get seduced into trying them again in about 2 years, but my most recent experiences (with some Athlon MP boards) will keep me away from Tyan for a while. Get an Asus, MSI, or Arima board. -----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net] On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 8:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference .... .... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance. -- Check the List-Unsubscribe header to unsubscribe For additional commands, email: suse-amd64-help@suse.com
I'll chime in my 2 cents worth... I have an Arima HDAMA and a Tyan 2885 and both work great. However, the HDAMA didn't support our raid card. The card is a MegaRAID SCSI 320-4X. I called Accelertech a couple of times, and they were nice, but they didn't seem to have the resources to track down the problem. As far as I could tell I was the only person in the world who was having this particular compatibility issue. They did say if I sent them the card they would try to fix the issue, which I thought was a good sign. I ended up getting the tyan because I knew they already had support for the card. From what I understand some (or all) of the IWill opteron boards are the same as the Arima boards. The Arima HDAMC is the same exact board as the IWIll DK8X. A couple of nits about the HDAMA. 2 of the dimm slots on the second cpu are very close to each other. The other dimm slots have a slight space between them. These 2 dimms, when populated, are almost touching, while the other have a decent space between them. This probably isn't a huge deal but it worried me a little. The tyan board has a space between all 8 dimm slots. One final nit-pick in the HDAMA. Accelertech's website (www.accelertech.com) has been down for over a week now and is still down. They seemed to provide support, bios upgrades and docs, for the Arima boards. Mark Miller, Daniel J. wrote:
MSI-9131 and Arima HDAMA have both been good for us. One of our MSI's has 6gig of RAM, most of the rest of our systems have 4gig (or less).
From past personal experience with the Tyan 24XX (and other) boards, I'd stay away from Tyan. Supposedly Tyan boards are now OK (they won't just die after a few months to maybe 3 years) but I'd let someone else prove or disprove that supposition. The only other board line I've ever seen with a failure rate like Tyan's is PCChips.
I hate to be so negative about a line that has so many terrific looking board designs, but so it goes.
Maybe our distributor happened to store their Tyan boards next to an industrial microwave oven with broke shielding, leaving the boxes pristine but mortally wounded components inside, and no one but us has had reliability problems with Tyan boards - but I doubt it.
Tyan has been offering attractive designs for a long time. I remember an early dual Pentium (wouldn't support MMX, just Pentium) Tyan system that had a screwed up cache controller design limiting its effective memory support to 64 meg. At least that board didn't flat out fail after a year.
They make some very appealing systems, because they're often the first (or the only) company to offer some configurations, but I know that I've learned to find something else, however appealing the Tyan may look.
I'll probably get seduced into trying them again in about 2 years, but my most recent experiences (with some Athlon MP boards) will keep me away from Tyan for a while.
Get an Asus, MSI, or Arima board.
-----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net] On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 8:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....
.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.
Mark Horton wrote:
I'll chime in my 2 cents worth...
I have an Arima HDAMA and a Tyan 2885 and both work great. However, the HDAMA didn't support our raid card. The card is a MegaRAID SCSI 320-4X. I called Accelertech a couple of times, and they were nice, but they didn't seem to have the resources to track down the problem. As far as I could tell I was the only person in the world who was having this particular compatibility issue. They did say if I sent them the card they would try to fix the issue, which I thought was a good sign. I ended up getting the tyan because I knew they already had support for the card.
From what I understand some (or all) of the IWill opteron boards are the same as the Arima boards. The Arima HDAMC is the same exact board as the IWIll DK8X.
A couple of nits about the HDAMA. 2 of the dimm slots on the second cpu are very close to each other. The other dimm slots have a slight space between them. These 2 dimms, when populated, are almost touching, while the other have a decent space between them. This probably isn't a huge deal but it worried me a little. The tyan board has a space between all 8 dimm slots.
One final nit-pick in the HDAMA. Accelertech's website (www.accelertech.com) has been down for over a week now and is still down. They seemed to provide support, bios upgrades and docs, for the Arima boards.
Mark
Miller, Daniel J. wrote:
MSI-9131 and Arima HDAMA have both been good for us. One of our MSI's has 6gig of RAM, most of the rest of our systems have 4gig (or less).
From past personal experience with the Tyan 24XX (and other) boards, I'd
stay away from Tyan. Supposedly Tyan boards are now OK (they won't just die after a few months to maybe 3 years) but I'd let someone else prove or disprove that supposition. The only other board line I've ever seen with a failure rate like Tyan's is PCChips. I hate to be so negative about a line that has so many terrific looking board designs, but so it goes.
Maybe our distributor happened to store their Tyan boards next to an industrial microwave oven with broke shielding, leaving the boxes pristine but mortally wounded components inside, and no one but us has had reliability problems with Tyan boards - but I doubt it.
Tyan has been offering attractive designs for a long time. I remember an early dual Pentium (wouldn't support MMX, just Pentium) Tyan system that had a screwed up cache controller design limiting its effective memory support to 64 meg. At least that board didn't flat out fail after a year.
They make some very appealing systems, because they're often the first (or the only) company to offer some configurations, but I know that I've learned to find something else, however appealing the Tyan may look.
I'll probably get seduced into trying them again in about 2 years, but my most recent experiences (with some Athlon MP boards) will keep me away from Tyan for a while.
Get an Asus, MSI, or Arima board.
-----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net] On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 8:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....
.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.
Monarch carries the ARIMA boards (see earlier posts in this thread), I'll look there for anything I do in all probability.
Miller, Daniel J. wrote:
MSI-9131 and Arima HDAMA have both been good for us. One of our MSI's has 6gig of RAM, most of the rest of our systems have 4gig (or less).
From past personal experience with the Tyan 24XX (and other) boards, I'd stay away from Tyan. Supposedly Tyan boards are now OK (they won't just die after a few months to maybe 3 years) but I'd let someone else prove or disprove that supposition. The only other board line I've ever seen with a failure rate like Tyan's is PCChips.
I hate to be so negative about a line that has so many terrific looking board designs, but so it goes.
Maybe our distributor happened to store their Tyan boards next to an industrial microwave oven with broke shielding, leaving the boxes pristine but mortally wounded components inside, and no one but us has had reliability problems with Tyan boards - but I doubt it.
Tyan has been offering attractive designs for a long time. I remember an early dual Pentium (wouldn't support MMX, just Pentium) Tyan system that had a screwed up cache controller design limiting its effective memory support to 64 meg. At least that board didn't flat out fail after a year.
They make some very appealing systems, because they're often the first (or the only) company to offer some configurations, but I know that I've learned to find something else, however appealing the Tyan may look.
I'll probably get seduced into trying them again in about 2 years, but my most recent experiences (with some Athlon MP boards) will keep me away from Tyan for a while.
Get an Asus, MSI, or Arima board.
-----Original Message----- From: wam@mail.hiwaay.net [mailto:wam@mail.hiwaay.net] On Behalf Of William A. Mahaffey III Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 8:28 AM To: SuSE AMD 64 Mailing List Subject: [suse-amd64] Opteron Board preference ....
.... I am getting close to trying to build an Opteron based machine as a compute node on my LAN, set up to run w/o monitor, keybd, mouse, & not a file server, just a (fast) CPU & lots of RAM. I have narrowed down to either ASUS SK8V or TYAN Tomcat K8S (both available @ newegg.com). Does anyone have any strong (preferably firsthand :-)) opinions, yea or nay, about either of these boards ? Thanks in advance.
Thanks, I was leaning TYAN, but I'll poke around a bit more. Those Arima HDAMA boards look nice. I was looking to do a single-CPU to start with, kinda pilot things to start with. I may revisit ASUS. Thanks.
participants (3)
-
Mark Horton -
Miller, Daniel J. -
William A. Mahaffey III