Aack!? DDR PC2100...ECC or Non-Parity?

[QuackQuack]

Buying DDR PC2100 memory at Crucial. Which is better, ECC or Non-Parity? ECC is $5 more for a 256meg stick.

 

[Barrak]

ECC = Error Corection Control, some say it slows things down a bit but it helps maintain data integrity while held in the Ram. Its a bit of personal preferance, for my game machine I do NOT get ECC

 

[JackBurton]

It may not be a matter of which is better, it may be a matter if your mobo supports ECC memory. Check to see before you buy. You can go either way, but if ECC is just a little more I'll get ECC just for peace of mind.

P.S. ECC stands for Error Correcting Code.

 

[Sukhoi]

I've heard ECC is slower (it has to deal with more data), and the chance of the ECC actually being needed and used in a desktop machine is very minimal, and thus not worth the price and performance loss.

 

[JackBurton]

Your not going to be able to tell the difference between ECC and non-parity memory. The only way you could tell the difference is when you do a benchmark and see you've lost a BIG one or two FPS in QIII. Like I said, you won't see a difference.

 

[Sukhoi]

But the chance of ECC actually catching a problem is also very small, so why spend the extra few $?

 

[SUOrangeman]

Sukhoi, do you have info/stats to back that up?

It was my understanding that ECC delays data transmission for one clock cycle (133MHz DDR - 1 Hz DDR). Not really a huge penalty.

The extreme case I'm living right now is that I bought 512MB of non-ECC PC2100 from Crucial when it first went on sale (I know, could have spent have of what I originally did ... if I had waited for the mobo announcement). Only Tyan has SMP Athlon boards out now (the reason why I bought the DDR) and they all require EEC DDR. So, until someone (Asus) releases their SMP Athlon board that doesn't require ECC DDR, I have to sit tight. Hopefully, the mobo prices will be more inline by then so I woun't be too eager twice.

-SUO

 

[Zepper]

I always recommend to buy ECC. It doesn't cost much more and you can always turn off ECC checking in CMOS setup when you're running games to squeeze out the last fps.
.bh.

 

[SpeedTrap]

i run ECC and it rocks you cant tell the difference. some people will run synthetic benches and be like non-parity is better but crap lok at it

can you tell what 50/1000 of a difference? i think not

 

[Sukhoi]

I don't have any data. I just remember a thread in here a while ago where it was basically come to the conclusion that ECC wasn't worth the money and possible performance loss. I do not know what the price difference was at that time though. If you guys can get ECC real cheap and don't have any performance problems, then use it if you want.