NON PARITY means NON - ECC ?

[LordGorzul]

My motherboard says I need a Stick or Ram with the following specs: 184-pin PC2100/PC1600 non-ECC, unbuffered DDR SDRAM

I'm buying this from Crucial : 184 pin - DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Unbuffered ? Non-parity ? 7.5ns ? 2.5V

Good choice? NON PARITY means NON - ECC right? This fits?

out of curiosity, if I got RAM that was ECC, or buffered, and put it on this motherboard (that asks for NON-parity/unbuffered) the system wouldnt work right?

Thanks for the info.

Lg.

 

[sohcrates]

yeah, you don't want ECC. ECC = error code correction...mostly used for servers and what not

non-parity doesn't really have anything to do with ECC

as long as it says it's not ECC, that's what you want

also check out AT FAQ

 

[LordGorzul]

well it doesnt say that it's non ECC, I todl you what it said it said:
184 pin - DDR PC2100 ? CL=2.5 ? Unbuffered ? Non-parity ? 7.5ns ? 2.5V

Should I assume it's non ECC??, caus eotherwise my system wont work.

 

[sohcrates]

yep, that'll work fine

 

[Lord Evermore]

Non-parity is sort of used as a synonym for non-ECC nowadays, but they're not the same.

Parity just means there's an extra chip on the module that's used for a parity bit (if you enable it in the BIOS). There's even and odd parity (odd being the standard). If you're using odd parity, the 8 bits in a byte of data are counted, and if there's an odd number of ones, the parity bit is left at zero. If there are an even number of ones, the parity bit is set to one, so there's always an odd number of ones. In this way, if a single bit is corrupted, then that byte will have an even number of ones, and the system will discard it.

More info.

Parity does not have a correction system, since it only counts bits but can't tell which one is corrupted. If there are two errored bits, then you're screwed and the system may crash or you store bad data to the hard drive or something like that.

ECC is error correcting code. In ECC, if a single bit gets corrupted, it gets corrected by the memory system, so it's a step beyond parity, but still not perfect. However it can at least prevent bad data from crashing the system with multi-bit errors.

I wonder if the "ECC" memory you get from Crucial or anyplace else that sells consumer modules is actually ECC memory or just parity memory which can be used in ECC mode.

 

[cleverhandle]

Memory specs will always clearly state that the mem is ECC. If they don't mention anything either way, then it's not.

 

[zephyrprime]

You know, I have a MB that says that I'm not supposed to use ECC but I do anyway and there are no problems. Has anyone ever experienced firsthand a MB that will not work with ECC?

 

[LordGorzul]

Yes, me.
I've been trying to figure out what's wrong with the PC I was building for months!!
I got no video no matter what I did, but the beeps where trying to tell me somehting, I went to the SOYO website, and apparently the beeps I get are because of memory that's not compatible.
I got the Soyo Dragon plus, with an athlon xp 1800+, and went to crucial to order me a 184 pin RAM stick DDR 256mb pc2100.
The soyo site says the RAM has to be ddr pc2100 or pc1600, but has to be non-parity.
the only thing that could be wrong is therefore the ECC thing, I think my ram has ECC, and therefore, my system wont work. After months of frustration i might finally be able to use those parts I bought. I order another stick of RAM with the correct specs. Hopefully, and almost certaily, that'll solve my problems.