Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › ECC or non ECC memory
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

ECC or non ECC memory

post #1 of 62
9/30/09 at 9:21am
Thread Starter 
OK
I just upgraded my PSU to a bequiet! brand, and its really good, with very stable rails, in iddle or loading,
I was thinking of upgrading my 1Gb RAM, to at least 2gb, and since my board support ECC nonREG RAM, I was thinking of going for that, cause old DDR ECC is really cheap,
Would you think I`ll get any advantage or I`m just slowing down my pc,
I use Foobar2k with a very large library, would error checking matter somehow
Reply
post #2 of 62
9/30/09 at 9:23am
ecc never slows things down enough for users to care or notice.

big boys swear by ecc ram.

get it. no reason not to.
Reply
post #3 of 62
9/30/09 at 10:00am
Not worth it imho.

If the RAM's faulty you'll notice anyway and want to exchange it asap.
Reply
post #4 of 62
9/30/09 at 12:39pm
You have much bigger PC problems than music playback if you need ECC ram.
Reply
post #5 of 62
9/30/09 at 12:59pm
you nay-sayers don't get it.

if your server is always on, the longer its on the more there is a chance of a bit error in ram.

there's no reason to fear ecc as long as your chipset supports it.

you may not care about your data, but others do!

please don't convince people AWAY from data integrity. you do a disservice to them if you talk them out of a more reliable system. sheesh!
Reply
post #6 of 62
9/30/09 at 1:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xnor View Post

If the RAM's faulty you'll notice anyway and want to exchange it asap.
no, you do NOT notice single bit errors when they are not part of program data. even then, how can you know that you had a bit error and not a random windows bug being triggered or some other flakey hardware?

no, you don't always notice errors and that's WHY you use hardware to 'watch' these things for you.

back in the day when a pc stayed up only as long as win95 would let it (a few hours) it was not as much of a big deal. now, we get uptimes in days, weeks and months.

you would be foolish NOT to avail yourself of hardware error correction.
Reply
post #7 of 62
9/30/09 at 1:02pm
Why in the world would you pay the premium for ECC ram, especially if it's nonregistered if you're so gung-ho about stability?? 4GB DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 non-ECC = $30 and you're not going to have any more problems with non-ECC... if it's defective it's defective.

Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxworks View Post
no, you do NOT notice single bit errors when they are not part of program data. even then, how can you know that you had a bit error and not a random windows bug being triggered or some other flakey hardware?

no, you don't always notice errors and that's WHY you use hardware to 'watch' these things for you.

back in the day when a pc stayed up only as long as win95 would let it (a few hours) it was not as much of a big deal. now, we getauptimes in days, weeks and months.

you would be foolish NOT to avail yourself of hardware error correction.
Hmm when I get a bit error it's because I overclock my RAM too much and I get a blue screen. Needing ECC for a desktop machine is such a load of FUD.
Reply
post #8 of 62
9/30/09 at 2:06pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks guys
In fact talking about DDR1 theres no that difference in price between ECC and non ECC, probably because theres large demand on nonECC

I dont think there would be any large advantage but for the same price and since it doesnt slow down the pc as linuxworks says why not have it..

..and yes on this pc, my main concern is music playing..
Reply
post #9 of 62
9/30/09 at 3:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by somestranger26 View Post
Why in the world would you pay the premium for ECC ram, especially if it's nonregistered
registered does not enter into it. ecc is the tech that matters; how it gets done is not relevant.

Quote:

Hmm when I get a bit error it's because I overclock my RAM too much and I get a blue screen. Needing ECC for a desktop machine is such a load of FUD.
if you say so.

but you're giving bad advice to people!
Reply
post #10 of 62
9/30/09 at 3:37pm
Quote:
In fact talking about DDR1 theres no that difference in price between ECC and non ECC, probably because theres large demand on nonECC
This is nonsense. The PCB is more complex, and 9 instead of 8 chips (72 bits instead of 64) are needed for each rank. So an ECC module is ALWAYS more expensive than a non-ECC module, unless the price is rising and old stock pops up somewhere. So if there is price parity this is only a temporary situation.

In practice, I see little advantage of ECC over non-ECC if the quality of the module is good. The reason is simple: the most common memory failures will most of the time cause a greater than 2 bit error, so the module will not be able to detect let alone correct it anyway. All in all I've only seen a handful of ECC errors in over 20 years across hunderds of servers. That said: if you can get ECC for the same price as non-ECC go for it. The performance disadvantage is minimal, plus the average quality is better (manufacturers sometimes cut corners on non-ECC production & testing).
Reply
post #11 of 62
9/30/09 at 3:41pm
I work for a large workstation and computer company. our stuff is meant to run 7x24 and it has 'server class' memory which is ALWAYS ecc based.

if ecc was such a waste, why do the big guys swear by it?

I do get a laugh from the non-computer guys here telling others what's good for them.

....if it wasn't so incorrect, that is. ;(
Reply
post #12 of 62
9/30/09 at 4:04pm
linuxworks, I understand what you mean, but we aren't talking about servers here so our advice is not bad.

Besides, ECC is far from being perfect and I'd rather have a bluescreen and exchange the faulty RAM than running a system with errors that are partly fixed..

And I'm not a non-computer guy.
Reply
post #13 of 62
9/30/09 at 4:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by linuxworks View Post
I work for a large workstation and computer company. our stuff is meant to run 7x24 and it has 'server class' memory which is ALWAYS ecc based.

if ecc was such a waste, why do the big guys swear by it?
Try actually reading their posts and maybe you'll understand. They're saying that ECC memory is a waste for HOME USERS. There is a world of difference between mission-critical enterprise servers and a home use PC. This should be incredibly obvious. If one goes down, lots of money goes down with it and perhaps a few people get fired. If the other goes down, maybe you lose that stash of **** you never bothered to back up.

For home users ECC ram isn't worth the premium. Their PC isn't going to be doing anything that requires expensive error correction functionality (or if it is, they'll be buying an actual workstation machine that uses server-class hardware to go with that ECC memory).
Reply
post #14 of 62
9/30/09 at 5:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kurotetsu View Post
Try actually reading their posts and maybe you'll understand. They're saying that ECC memory is a waste for HOME USERS. There is a world of difference between mission-critical enterprise servers and a home use PC. This should be incredibly obvious. If one goes down, lots of money goes down with it and perhaps a few people get fired. If the other goes down, maybe you lose that stash of **** you never bothered to back up.

For home users ECC ram isn't worth the premium. Their PC isn't going to be doing anything that requires expensive error correction functionality (or if it is, they'll be buying an actual workstation machine that uses server-class hardware to go with that ECC memory).
This.
Reply
post #15 of 62
9/30/09 at 5:07pm
What he said ^
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Computer Audio
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › ECC or non ECC memory