Which AM3+ boards support ECC

[Greenie]

Having trouble finding information on which AM3+ motherboards have bios support for unbuffered ECC memory. I heard the Gigabyte 990FX boards should work with it but got a negative response to my Gigabyte website inquiry.

Anyone know of a site or forum building a list?

 

[trents]

It may be a little early to ask that question since there are just a handful of AM#+ boards out there at this point in time. I never thought about it but is ECC motherboard dependent? Since the advent of the ICM I would think it would be dependent on the CPU.

 

[RGone]

It may be a little early to ask that question since there are just a handful of AM#+ boards out there at this point in time. I never thought about it but is ECC motherboard dependent? Since the advent of the ICM I would think it would be dependent on the CPU.

True but the manufacturer has to support it and make the bios for inclusion of ECC memory.

 

[RGone]

GA-990FXA-UD7 supports ECC

In the past Biostar has supported ECC as well as Asus.

Remember this is unregisterd and unbuffered ECC type ram. These are not server type motherboards.

 

[Greenie]

Yeah I know it's just bare ECC but didn't Google publish a paper on how 24/7 operation saw a surprisingly higher than expected memory error rate? Leaning towards an all RAM slots on deck VM machine with ECC but then again reasonably priced ECC doesn't go past DDR3-1333 from what I have seen.

 

[RGone]

I have yet to 'really' see AMD architecture like fast ram better than the AMD system with their chipset...likes better tighter timings. So DDR1333 is not a real loss if ECC is a necessity.

 

[Gasman3055]

The Asus 990x 990fx chipset mobos support.

I have not built a machine w/o ECC for at least 5 years. I want to be sure any errors are software, not hardware. Only ECC unrecoverable errors ever reported was due to a leak in my watercooling.

 

[Gasman3055]

I could find no reference stating ECC support for any modern gigabyte AMD board. One mention in the ERROR codes in the manual. Nothing in the memory list. Do you have this mobo? Is is listed in the BIOS?

GA-990FXA-UD7 supports ECC

 

[Gasman3055]

Did find a reference that states Gigabyte GA-MA770T-US3 is ECC and this is supported on their site.

 

[Gasman3055]

On the Intel side where I live at present, one must use a Xeon for ECC. On the Intel side, only a few ASUS boards support ECC. My main machine uses a Supermicro Dual 1366. It only supports ECC if you use a XEON.

My question (just dipping my toe into AMD for first time in years) is this: Do all AMD AM3+ CPUs support ECC?

I just want a machine for my mother but I just have become addicted to ECC. I don't like bluescreens and (knock on wood) have not had one on the Supermicro since the water spill. Want minimal errors so am looking at AMD as the cheapest mobo/ CPU on the intel side is $450.

 

[stevenb]

i read that the GB board had it too

 

[trents]

I know ECC stands for "Error-Correcting Code" but does it prevent BSODs from all causes? I mean BSOD is not that much of a problem is it? It just seems like you're obsessed with it. Just like pain is valuable because it tells you something about your body needs attention so BSOD tells you something is wrong with your system that needs attention; maybe a hardware problem or bios settings are wrong. You've said this is for your mom but does national security depend on it?

 

[Gasman3055]

ECC can detect a minimum of single bit errors. Depending on the precise Hamming code used, maybe more. Been a long time since I did the math. Look up Hamming Codes for more info.

 

[Gasman3055]

If it is a BSOD, I want to be relatively certain it is software. I get very few of them nowadays, maybe a few a year running complex software including VMware. My simple systems simply do not experience them with Windows 7 or Ubuntu 10.

If I get one, I don't want it to be due to a random alpha particle. Random events are very difficult to track down and fix -- alpha particle caused ones are impossible as they are truly random events. If I get two within a month or so, I tend to revert my OS to one some months back. ECC makes it relatively certain any BSOD is software which I can fix rather than hardware including subatomic processes.

 

[trents]

ECC makes it relatively certain any BSOD is software which I can fix rather than hardware including subatomic processes.

So a flaky motherboard or hard drive, for example, would not cause BSOD when ECC memory is used? Is this what you mean to say?

I haven't gotten any BSOD's lately from stray "sub atomic particles". My experience is BSOD means something is wrong that needs attention, even if its only software memory leaks that suggest the computer hasn't been restarted in a long time. Like you say, BSOD used to be a common occurrence with the older OSs but that was back in the Windows 3.1/98 days.