X520 OEM differences

[Nogtail]

I just got myself a couple of OEM X520 cards - a Dell and a Fujitsu. The Dell appears identical to the Intel card however the Fujitsu has a different PCB. Besides the physical differences, are there any firmware differences that I should be aware of? Intel claims their retail firmware is not updatable, however Dell seems to have released a whole heap of firmware updates for their cards. I don't have a Dell available to install these updates so will I be stuck with a card with outdated firmware? Is there any way of restoring a stock Intel firmware?

Thanks!

 

[RTM]

Fujitsu is known to make their own designs, so I am not too surprised by this.

Generally speaking, I am not aware of a need to update firmware of these cards (or even them having the ability to be updated).
I believe what Dell is referring to as firmware update, is the option ROM, which is not needed for the board to operate, it's for stuff like PXE boot and iscsi.

Of course I could be wrong here, it is just my observations.

Anyway, from my point of view, the fujitsu is on par with real Intels, in the sense that it's based on the same controller (82599) and is of "enterprise" origin.

The thing is, if you buy used on a place like eBay, there are more fake Intel cards than from vendors like Fujitsu, Supermicro or Silicom, the result being that you have a greater chance of getting a real card if you get one of those than an "Intel", but you also have a slightly higher chance of experiencing oddities (because Intel cards are presumably tested better/more widely used).

In my book that makes them about even.

 

[Nogtail]

Fujitsu is known to make their own designs, so I am not too surprised by this.

Generally speaking, I am not aware of a need to update firmware of these cards (or even them having the ability to be updated).
I believe what Dell is referring to as firmware update, is the option ROM, which is not needed for the board to operate, it's for stuff like PXE boot and iscsi.

Of course I could be wrong here, it is just my observations.

Anyway, from my point of view, the fujitsu is on par with real Intels, in the sense that it's based on the same controller (82599) and is of "enterprise" origin.

The thing is, if you buy used on a place like eBay, there are more fake Intel cards than from vendors like Fujitsu, Supermicro or Silicom, the result being that you have a greater chance of getting a real card if you get one of those than an "Intel", but you also have a slightly higher chance of experiencing oddities (because Intel cards are presumably tested better/more widely used).

In my book that makes them about even.

At least where I live it seems almost impossible to get a genuine Intel card. The only ones I could find that weren't rebranded/custom designs were sketchy looking "new" cards from China, well, apart from one joker trying to sell a used Intel for like $2000.

I ended up skimming through the datasheet for the controller and it looks like there's an EEPROM for configuration and a flash chip for the option ROM? It seems to have the provision for operating without a flash chip so in any case it doesn't look like anything too vital is stored there. The EEPROM also doesn't seem to store any firmware as it is possible to perform initial EEPROM programming from the controller, so I'm assuming the firmware is baked into the chip or loaded from the driver.

It looks like Intel's "BootUtil" tool is able to update the flash and maybe some EEPROM values too. I'll try and give that a go when I get the cards, although it's not clear if it will work with third party designs.