Attempting to further ed-u-ma-cate myself.

Why are mobo's such as Asus M2N32, Gigabyte GA-3PXSL, and Tyan S3950G2NR considered "server" grade, at least according to NewEgg.

Different BIOS, NorthBridge, SouthBridge?

Price alone doesn't seem to be the answer. DFI NF-590 and Asus CrossHair are "consumer" mobo's which are more expensive than the Gigabyte and Tyan "server" mobo's.

Not sure why they class the Asus M2N32 as a server board, more an enthusiasts board.

A server board usually has all the crap stripped out, e.g. SLI since there is no need, often have an integrated video (less chance of compatability problems, not often needed and you don't get he contact problems (e.g AGP/PCI-E interface contacts)
They usually have better spec busses, like PCI-X for high bandwidth data transfer.
Other is just the quality of the manufacture (something also seen in decent enthusiast boards, like voltage regulation etc, PCB type etc..
That sort of thing. They are made to last and be stable, all the other stuff that will not be needed is stripped out.

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Team mauisun.org

Added as an example


The Tyan you mention.
Integrated graphics, PCI-X 64bit, 133MHz (as opposed to PCI 32bit, 33MHz), this one has a SO-DIMM socket, which I assume gives you the choice if using in a rackmount (thay are smaller, aka laptop memory) and not much else, than dual gigabit ethernet, USB and SATA. Though this one lacks PCI-E which some are beginning to use now various controllers other than graphics are starting to use (e.g. RAID, LAN)


EDIT/ Ah that SO-DIMM isn't for rack mount stuff, it the expansion for the missing SAS controller. I guess you'll see the SAS replacing the SATA controller in future server boards (since you can run SATA on SAS controllers anyway).

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Team mauisun.org

Usually you get more than one ethernet jack, and the ability to net boot. Check out the bios section of the manual, and you will see some of the unique features.

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

Usually you get more than one ethernet jack, and the ability to net boot. Check out the bios section of the manual, and you will see some of the unique features.

Also server boards usually come with built in RAID, and some kind of independent monitor processor, so you can monitor/reboot remotely a board that is totally hung.

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bump

bump

Why?

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Nemesis n. A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent.

One of the features for server motherboards is access to or requiring registered memory. You can fit more ram on the motherboard, it's built to identify that it's failing, and access speed is lower than the insecure stuff we use on our desktops.

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Another feature is multiple cpu sockets. ;-)

Richard

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Click the Sig!

BOINC Wiki

Another feature is multiple cpu sockets. ;-)

Richard

Like my awesome BP6!

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