Jens Andre Griepentrog wrote:

>Dear NetBSD AMD64 Community,
>
>I would like to get an Opteron compute server with a large amount
>of memory appropriate for three-dimensional numerical simulations.
>
>I have got some offer for a system with a Tyan S2882-D or S2892 board
>with two Opterons 248HE, U320 SCSI disks, and 16GB memory. But after
>tweaking out more information the same dealer concedes severe BIOS
>problems with the 90nm Opteron version connected to more than 2GB
>of memory! So one can feel a little bit irritated having in mind
>that all 248HE Opterons are manufactured in 90nm process ... 
>
>It would be nice to hear from experienced BSD users which combinations
>of Opteron mainboards and processors work stable with 16GB or more of
>installed memory.
>
>Best regards,
>Jens A. Griepentrog
>
>PS: I would like to thank the whole BSD Community for their efforts
>maintaining that nice operating system which I have been using now
>for over ten years.
>
>  
>
As a datapoint I work at a firm that uses numerous Tyan 2 and 4 way 
boards with up to 16Gb Memory.  Generally our 2 way systems have 8Gb and 
the 4 way have 16 (1Gb Dimms).  We recently have ordered a 2 way system 
with opteron 275 processors and 16Gb PC3200 mem for evaluation.  This 
will use the 2Gb modules,  and after our discussions with our vendors 
we're pretty confident that this configuration will work.  On the other 
hand we have only been quoted PC2700 speeds for 4Gb modules, and they 
are very costly.

You will need high quality memory modules with conservative timings.  
Crucial, ATP, and Kingston all make high quality memory products that 
work well on Opteron systems.  Also, enable chipkill-ecc in the bios, if 
it isn't enabled by default.

skd