On 10/15/11 10:08 PM, John Carmonne wrote:
Mixing ECC and non ECC, when its actually possible, doesn't cause
instability.It just means that the ECC stick won't use the ECC
capabilities if its on the same bank as the non-ecc.
Is there a rule here as to what type of application needs ECC RAM?
In the past, general rule of thumb was server motherboards and high end
workstations. These days, ECC is in alot of high end desktop/gaming
motherboards as well as server boards.
However, in some cases, ECC ram will work fine in a non-ECC system. Not
guaranteed though - and in alot of cases, non-ECC in a server system
will cause the bios to complain or just not boot.
Alot of the MCHs that the vendors use during the DDR era were... for
lack of a better word, a hit or miss when it came to RAM types. A prime
example was the Intel 8xx series that in some systems would work fine
with PC2700, but not PC3200 even though they should be technically
compatible.
In the end, it comes down to, are you willing to spend a few extra bucks
and a slight slowdown on the RAM's performance for the ability to
gracefully recover from memory errors without it bringing down the whole
system? If your system can use ECC, then IMHO, its worth it. If your
system is mission critical, then yes, you really should be using ECC.
--
Brielle Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
http://www.sosdg.org / http://www.ahbl.org
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