To ECC or not ECC. That is the question

marabob

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Jun 26, 2001
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Tis it better to use ECC DDR or non ECC DDR in my rig. The machine will have an Abit KG7 Raid mobo - 1.2 Athlon. 4 strips of 256 DDR PC 2100. Registered? Unbufferd? Non-parity? CL2? CL2.5? It's all greek to me. 3 20 gig ATA/100 drives. Matrox dual head graphics board. SO what kinda ram to use? And what is the diffence between ECC and Non ECC ddr?
 

stonerboy

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Dec 31, 2007
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You might want to check to make sure that board will support 4 strips of memory. Most motherboards will on support two strips if the memory is double sided (which most 256 chips are). In which case you would have to get two strips of 512 to keep the same amount.
As for the ECC, it really depends on what you are using it for. It it is going to be a server then yes. ECC is error correcting and involves some pretty complicated formulas. If it is going to just be your home PC then you probably wouldn't benefit any from it. Plus the ECC is just a little bit slower than non-ECC.
 

Arrow

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Dec 31, 2007
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You'd probably find some helpful info at the FAQs at mushkin and Crucial.

Rob
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