Difference between ECC and non-ECC ram

[munisgtm]

anybody knows them ? any real-world differnce in normal applications and specially gaming ?

 

[PCNerdDude]

ECC is primarily used in server applications. Non-ECC is what is more mainstream. Performance..don't really know. I would think it would be hard to find a mainstream motherboard that supports ECC memory

 

[vanvock]

I think ECC is usually used on servers or workstations, probably a bit slower

 

[Mday]

Originally posted by: munisgtm
anybody knows them ? any real-world differnce in normal applications and specially gaming ?

ecc = error correcting code. basically the technology has the ability to detect and correct single bit errors and report 2 bit errors.

It's use in servers is pretty much a necessity, at a performance hit. assuming all else the same, ECC = slower than non-ECC.

 

[Mark R]

Basically, normal RAM uses 8 (or 16) chips on a DIMM - so 16x 512 Mbit chips would give a 1 GByte DIMM.
ECC uses an extra set of chips, to provide redundacy in case a memory chip malfunctions (kind of like RAID does). So a 1 GByte DIMM, would use 18x 512 MBit chips. The 2 extra chips provide the redundancy.

ECC is more expensive, and a tiny bit slower (because the motherboard has to perform checking calculations every time the RAM is access).

The advantage of ECC, is that if a single bit of memory is corrupted, the system will carry on as normal and run correctly. If a rarer double-bit memory error occurs, the system is guaranteed to shut down with a blue screen error (guaranteeing that corrupted data doesn't get saved to hard drive). This is important for servers where data corruption could be very serious, or a system crash may leave a server unavailable.

Without ECC, memory corruption could go undetected - leading to random crashes, or file corruption.

ECC is not designed to protect against faulty memory (although it can help) - it's main role is to protect against random memory corruption due to background cosmic radiation, and radioactive contamination in the memory chips themselves.

There is a special version of ECC, called chipkill, supported by Opteron processors, and some Xeon motherboards, which is even more sophisticated. It is able to protect against an entire RAM chip dieing - the system will just carry on running. It's a little slower again, and it needs special DIMMs.

 

[munisgtm]

thanks you guys cleared up my mind!

 

[Zepper]

Actually all mobos that support the 64-bit AMD chips should support ECC memory as it is part of the memory manager which now resides in the CPU rather than in the mobo chipset. If you are running mission-critical financial applications - or engineering apps - or even software RAID (what's integrated in most mobos these days), ECC memory could benefit you. If your mobo doesn't pass the ECC memory support feature of the CPU thru to the end user then you are getting gypped - it's almost free to the mobo maker. But it can confuse the end user. When/if I go 64 bit, I'll also be going ECC.

And most Intel chipsets have supported ECC memory all along.

Many gamers use RAID 0 to hasten the loading of layers, etc. ECC would help the reliability there. That's about all the utility of ECC for gamers.

.bh.