ECC ram and non ECC playing nice?

D

deuce868

Gawd
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Feb 13, 2004
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I want to take a 512 ECC dimm from my server and add it to a test box but I am not sure if ECC ram will play nice with non and work just fine. I undersant it won't be error checking and since I have never tried mixing am I asking for trouble? It's all PC133.

Thanks
 
don't most motherboards offer and option to enable ecc mode or not? i'm far too lazy to check but i know my roomie stole from pc133 ecc ram from my dell 500sc to mess around in some old bx based board w/o any issue.
 
Well from the experience I had with ECC DDR, it will *not* function in a non-ECC mobo. Tried to drop the memory from my server into my main box (see sig) and it wouldn't post.
 
Originally posted by Vertigo Acid
Well from the experience I had with ECC DDR, it will *not* function in a non-ECC mobo. Tried to drop the memory from my server into my main box (see sig) and it wouldn't post.
Click to expand...

Ive tossed crucial ECC ram in a non ecc bord with no problems. I also ran it for a while in an ECC supported bord with the ECC featrues disabled.
 
ECC ram will work by itself in a non ECC setup, but u will not have ECC obviously. About it playing nice with the other ram, well that's a toss up and it may or may not work. If it's not the same type of ram it might not play nice. That's just the rule of thumb.
 
ok and now for the extreme noob question of the year, what is the difference between ecc, and non ecc? what is error checking?
 
Ah, alas that is actually not the noob question of the year. Actually the noob quesiton of the year goes to myself for asking,
"What is a floppy?" That was of course a really lame attempt at a joke.
Anyhoo, ECC stands for Error Correcting Codes, I believe. What ECC Ram does is that it allows the RAM to check for errors or corruption in code and stream it back before it gets looped through the system. However, ECC RAM does not alone have the power to fix such errors. You must have Registered RAM to allow for such fixes. Generally speaking ECC/Registered RAM is mainly for the server/workstation market because data integrity is of the absolute most importance. If you are going above 1gb it is the general rule is that ECC/Registered would be nice because data corruption is more likely to occur. However, there is a slight decrease in performance, which many will definitely defend because I mean this is after all an [H] forum. However, getting a few errors here and there aint so bad. It's simply writing corrupt code to your HDD. Ok, well that's enough bantha fodder for today. Anyways, ECC/Registered is really really expensive and Unbuffered RAM should be just fine and dandy. ECC has also been called many another name such as Extrememly Costly Configuration. Many an AMD64 fan has complained about this extra cost of such memory (ooh grammar check that please). However, realize that if u are looping bad data around your system as I am looping bad data here, jk, it will create a penalty on your performance anyhoo. But we here as [H]ard Member who seek the extreme performance thrill are willing to take that risk and that is why they jack up those darn RAM prices. wow, can't believe I finally tied up this post.
 
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