First things first. I am a software developer trying to learn hardware. I hope my question is clear and concise. I am open to feedback in this regard.
Problem: I built a server using the Tyan S8236WGM3NR-IL based upon the AMD SR5690 chipset.
I want to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter. It is not on Tyan's supported OS list.
Supermicro has an almost identical board H8DG6-F. It does support WS2012R2 (With a caveat that it appears to only support dot hill SATA).
There are 3 total drivers for the Supermicro H8DG6-F:
To be clear, This is not mission critical production server, it is for R&D purposes. However, I want the server performance to match a production server with the same hardware. I would prefer not to spend any more money. If I have to spend an extra 500 to get the Supermicro H8DG6-F in order to achieve that performance, I will.
This leads to a few more questions.
Having only built an Intel server prior, it is surprising to me that I cannot find AMD SR5690 chipset drivers for any motherboard manufactured for that chipset.
Does Microsoft exclusively provide these chipset drivers?
Can a BIOS implementation be critical to supporting a specific OS? For example, could Supermicro have released a H8DG6-F BIOS which natively supports virtualization, LAN, SMBUS etc. on WS2012R2?
These all may work on the Tyan board, but would it be suboptimal? (To answer this question, I tried to find BIOS release notes for both Supermicro and Tyan but it appears this information is not readily available.)
Thanks
Problem: I built a server using the Tyan S8236WGM3NR-IL based upon the AMD SR5690 chipset.
I want to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter. It is not on Tyan's supported OS list.
Supermicro has an almost identical board H8DG6-F. It does support WS2012R2 (With a caveat that it appears to only support dot hill SATA).
There are 3 total drivers for the Supermicro H8DG6-F:
- Intel LAN
- dot hill Raid Drivers
- Assured VRA Management (for dot hill raid)
To be clear, This is not mission critical production server, it is for R&D purposes. However, I want the server performance to match a production server with the same hardware. I would prefer not to spend any more money. If I have to spend an extra 500 to get the Supermicro H8DG6-F in order to achieve that performance, I will.
This leads to a few more questions.
Having only built an Intel server prior, it is surprising to me that I cannot find AMD SR5690 chipset drivers for any motherboard manufactured for that chipset.
Does Microsoft exclusively provide these chipset drivers?
Can a BIOS implementation be critical to supporting a specific OS? For example, could Supermicro have released a H8DG6-F BIOS which natively supports virtualization, LAN, SMBUS etc. on WS2012R2?
These all may work on the Tyan board, but would it be suboptimal? (To answer this question, I tried to find BIOS release notes for both Supermicro and Tyan but it appears this information is not readily available.)
Thanks