The limitations of importing large MySQL databases via the web interface of phpmyadmin are easily resolved.

Simply untar your backup and copy it over to a temporary directory on the server where you'd like to import / restore the database.

SSH into the server and move into the directory where you placed the database, and from the command line:

mysql -u root -p database_name < database.sql

Done!

One variation may be that you need to specify UTFf-8 - if thisis the case, simply run:

mysql -u root -p --default-character-set=utf8 database < database.sql