Any way to confirm ECC functioning?

J

Jay_S

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Messages
90
All,

My home file server consists of the following:
1) Biostar A760G-M2+ motherboard
2) AMD 4050e Athlon64 x2
3) Kingston 2GB 533MHz DDR2 ECC (P/N: KVR533D2E4K2/2G)

That's ECC memory. The A64's memory controller supports ECC. The board supports ECC in BIOS. But Biostar adamantly denies it.

The applicable section in BIOS:
eccbios1.jpg


ECC enabled:
eccbios2.jpg


Memtest 86+ confirms it:
eccmemtest.jpg


Biostar's responses so far are pretty funny:
No ECC functionality, currently none of our motherboards have ECC function, generally ECC functions are found on server based motherboards.
Click to expand...
That was after I stated that I was already using ECC memory and had enabled it in BIOS. Oh yeah, and it's in THEIR MANUAL. Biostar responded:
For this board that setting is supposed to be hidden because it doesn’t have that feature. It has ECC memory, but the function isn’t there.
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I haven't replied to that one yet - I'm not sure if I understand it. I'm going to forward them the BIOS and memtest shots above.

Anyway. Is there some way I can test ECC functionality on my end? The only method I've found so far to repeatably introduce single bit errors is to insulate one if the contacts (with tape or something). Any other ideas? Taping over contacts isn't something I'm comfortable with...
 
Last edited:
For what it's worth, I asked Kingston...
Hello,

Memtest confirms that the ECC function is working.

Regards,

Glenn Neumeister
Kingston Technology
Technical Support
Click to expand...
So...
 
Sorry, OS = unRAID. I'll need something that runs from the linux command prompt or a bootable USB drive.
 
If you install the EDAC drivers you'll be able to use edac-util to see the ECC status and any errors it's picked up.

You could install them as modules or compile them into the kernel, all the recent kernels have them.
 
Ah, interesting! unRAID 4.2.2 has kernel 2.6.27.7. I'll look into this tonight. Thanks for the help!
 
I believe ECC is available in all Athlon64 processors desktop lines or Opteron chips. The memory controller with ECC support is on the CPU. A motherboard maker could disable supporting this however. I believe the person you communicated to at Biostar did not know AMD processors. I have used this on opteron chips but that was with registered memory which desktop chips do not support. I would use ECC with desktop AMD builds but that certainly limits the memory selection.
 
When you think about it, if this board did fully support ECC functions, then why would Biostar deny it? You would think that this would be an excellent selling point and that Biostar would certainly want to tout this feature and inform potential customers it has this capability. But with Biostar reporting the board does not support ECC functions and OP not returning to his thread to verify the results, its not a good sign that this board fully supports ECC memory functionality.
 
Perhaps, but it doesn't seem likely that multiple tech support inquires at different times have all came back with the same statement, that ECC functions aren't supported. And after OP saying "I'll look into this" and then abandoning this thread, well, that's not a good sign, either.

In other words, if OP can't confirm that ECC functions are supported and Biostar states that ECC functions are NOT supported and the Biostar website doesn't specify that this board will support ECC, then its pretty easy to draw the conclusion that the ECC functions aren't supported on the Biostar A760G M2+. Unless someone can "prove" otherwise, it should be assumed it does not support ECC.
 
DiscreteMeat said:
And after OP saying "I'll look into this" and then abandoning this thread, well, that's not a good sign, either.

In other words, if OP can't confirm that ECC functions are supported and Biostar states that ECC functions are NOT supported and the Biostar website doesn't specify that this board will support ECC, then its pretty easy to draw the conclusion that the ECC functions aren't supported on the Biostar A760G M2+.
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Jesus man. It's like your personal project to "draw conclusions" about this motherboard's ECC function. You forget that Biostar's own manual shows the ECC functions. (In case Biostar pulls the manual, I can forward you one - you want A76GA-M2S_090115_B.zip.) The tech support person/people I spoke with all denied ECC functionality in a backwards, "cover our asses", "whoops, that's not supposed to be there", highly equivocal sort of way. None of their responses sound reasonable to me or any of the other people who have contacted them.

As for abandoning the thread, I don't see how that can be counted as evidence that the motherboard doesn't support ECC.

Per Abit667's suggestion, I looked into edac, but my lack of linux skill (or unRAID's general inflexibility) were a dead end. However, I've been talking with another Biostar A760G-M2+ owner who was able to test. He PM'd this:
I hadn't heard about this until now. I did an install and a quick test. If I run "edac-util" with no options, it says: "edac-util: No errors to report."

I also ran "edac-util --verbose --status" and got this:
Code: 
edac-util: EDAC drivers are loaded. 1 MC detected:
  mc0:Athlon64/Opteron
Looks like there isn't anything interesting to see unless errors have been corrected.

The above was on my Biostar A760G system. I installed the EDAC stuff on my Intel P45-based board (i.e. definitely no ECC). Result: "edac-util: Fatal: Unable to get EDAC data: Unable to find EDAC data in sysfs". This makes sense, as there is no P45 kernel module since P45 doesn't support ECC.
Click to expand...
DiscreteMeat said:
Unless someone can "prove" otherwise, it should be assumed it does not support ECC.
Click to expand...
What would it take to "prove" this to you? My BIOS screenshots, my Memtest screenshots, the Kingston tech's comments, and Biostar's own manual seem insufficient. So add the EDAC comments above. Sufficient? Probably not - as long as Biostar denies it, I fear nothing will convince you.

From the thread that started this in Data Storage Systems:
DiscreteMeat said:
Unfortunately, Jay_S was never able to confirm that the Biostar A760G M2+ has full support for ECC memory and left the thread he started without reporting back to verify. Until someone from Biostar reports it or someone can confirm with 100% proof, I would err on the side that this board does NOT support ECC functions.
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Again? Seriously? Is absence so damning? As if none of us has a life outside of these forums?

All appearances indicate that ECC is working on this motherboard. I believe this to be the case because it has not been proven otherwise. Biostar's talking-heads responses are not persuasive in the slightest. I appreciate your healthy skepticism, but believe me - I am more skeptical of Biostar given the quality of their responses.

FYI - I will not revisit this thread. This should not be considered further evidence of missing ECC function on the Biostar A760G M2+.
 
Jay_S, as I already said here, no more confirmations are needed.
MemTest86+ clearly shows your system is running with the DRAMs on ECC MODE.
Thanks again and enjoy.
 
My system:

AMD ATHLON X2 5050e
BIOSTAR TA760G
KINGSTON KVR800D2E6\2G

I can confirm ECC MODE is working (detect / correct), but since I am using only 1 DIMM, Chipkill (tm) functionality is OFF (not a big deal for a mid-end server, it is an enhancement to the ECC mode done by IBM for correcting up to 4 bit-error at a time instead of only 1).

Nice board, BTW.
 
FYI, a Kingston ECC Registered ram is not compatible with Biostar A760. I bought the Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8P5/2G info here

The motherboard wont post and I just get a black screen. I even updated to the latest bios and still the same issue.

I will look for the same memory (ECC unbuffered) that Jay_S used on his server since that is compatible.

Server WIP:
Sempron 140 / Biostar A760 M2+ / CM 590 / Earthwatts 500w
 
SCSI said:
FYI, a Kingston ECC Registered ram is not compatible with Biostar A760. I bought the Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8P5/2G info here

The motherboard wont post and I just get a black screen. I even updated to the latest bios and still the same issue.

I will look for the same memory (ECC unbuffered) that Jay_S used on his server since that is compatible.

Server WIP:
Sempron 140 / Biostar A760 M2+ / CM 590 / Earthwatts 500w
Click to expand...
That's Registered ECC RAM (also called "Buffered"), you can see the added control chip in the middle. This board supports only Unbuffered ECC, the model is not important.
 
Is this still the only non-server AMD board we know of that supports ECC functionality and will take a PCIe x8 or x16 sata controller in the PCIe x16 slot? None of the newer boards with newer chipsets have these features?
 
Reviving an old thread...

I picked up the Biostar TA760G motherboard with some unbuffered ECC DDR2 from Kingston and had the same memtest86+ results as Kamgusta: ECC detect/correct on, Chipkill off.

I then put the same ECC modules onto a A760G (smaller version of motherboard with only 2 DIMM slots), and got the same results as Jay_S: ECC detect/correct on Chipkill on.

Well, from my earlier question in this forum, the Kingston ECC modules I have do not have chipkill. I'm guessing the BIOS is returning a hardcoded value with regards to chipkill on the A760G whenever ECC is "enabled". Makes me wonder how thorough ECC support is on these boards.
 
I have seen chipkill on without special dimms (well normal REG ECC DDR) on several AMD motherboards specifically Opteron boards.
 
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