Anyway, I have two consumer x79 motherboards - Asus Formula and MSI GD65.
Unbuffered ECC is working fine on Formula (multibit error correction, etc.), but MSI refuses to post with ECC RAM installed (both boards with Xeons).
Don’t know if all traces have been placed on MSI mb (72 bit) or is it a BIOS limitation (MSI has crappy BIOS for these boards).
I was comparing two BIOSes to see the difference around ECC, but can’t seem to find the right module. No ECC control is exposed on any of these boards through amibcp, UEFI tool finds some entries but (to me) on illogical places.
Error post code is 37: early north bridge initialization.
There are earlier post codes for NB which it passes.
In image below, upper part is from Formula, lower from MSI.
There is a size difference but I’m not sure if NBDXE is for north bridge.
Maybe just a transplant would be enough?
Almost positive none of MSI’s X79 board supported ECC. ASUS, ASRock and Gigabyte were somewhat anomalies in the era because they also designed server gear using LGA-2011, and ASUS was notorious for wiring up extra pins that Intel marked as reserve for HEDT that were in use on HPC.
