Does ECC on DDR slow down Athlon XP's?

[Bilvader]

heard a rumor that ecc checking on ddr ram modules will slow down athlon xp systems.

Is this true?

My planned system

Asus a7v266-e
Athlon XP 2000+
Mushkin HP PC2100 ECC cas2
Leadtek GF2 GTS

 

[soulm4tter]

probably a little yes. Do some benchmarks with it enabled and disabled and then let us know.

 

[Bilvader]

I do plan on doing benchmarks once assembled, but first I have to decide whether or not to open the Mushkin memory package I just got in the mail.

 

[soulm4tter]

did it cost you alot more than non-ecc? It should function just as fast as non-ecc with ecc disabled. So if you didn't pay alot extra for it, don't worry about it. If you paid alot more and don't need ecc, then send it back for non-ecc.

 

[r0tt3n1]

ECC memory can slow you down about 2%. You wont notice any difference except in benchmarks......

 

[Turkey22]

I've read and heard that it can slow you down anywhere from 5-15% And I think for a desktop that you don't need the error checking. Also I think it is a little more expensive.

 

[Howard]

ECC on anything slows down everything.

 

[Pabster]

It's blown out of porportion.

ECC doesn't slow things down THAT much. You do take a slight performance hit -- yes -- but in a mission critical server-oriented situation, you'd be a fool not to use it.

 

[Idontcare]

One thing that having ECC will slow down (quite noticably) is the reboot/boot time.

When you have ECC enabled in the BIOS and you turn your computer on, the BIOS must write (a zero) and read (to verify that the bit is functioning) every single bit (512MB*1024KB/MB*1024byte/KB*8bits/byte = 44,560,285,696 bits!!!) before the bios-post is considered complete.

One my system with 1.5GB of ECC PC2100 DDR it takes about 3 minutes (yes, three llllloooonnnnngggg minutes) to complete the bios-post before win2k even starts loading.

Once loaded I can say there is no noticable difference between running win2k with or without the ECC.

-Phil

edit messed up my units...

 

[Bilvader]

Thanks everyone for your excellent advice.

As always, I hear what I need to hear.

Bilvader