hks85

i have an ASUS mobo with a bunch of ECC settings in the bios. its not a server board, its an AM2+. I have some non-ECC dimms (gskill ddr2-1100)

right now i have the ECC setting all turned to max, am assuming that there is more overhead but i haven't noticed any speed loss. without ECC ram, is my computer actually running with ECC? what kind of speed loss should i expect? do any of you use it? If i get enough feedback, I may do some benchmarks

:::EDIT::: read further to see benchmark

slngsht

You can run non-ECC ram on a board that supports ECC ram. It will be a bit snappier without ECC ram.

edit: I read your post again and skimmed past the part where you had all the ECC options in the bios turned on. I have never tried doing that on a board before, but I always assumed it wouldn't work. I'm willing to bet, even though you have those options turned on, there's no way that ECC is being utilized since the ram doesn't support it. Frankly, I'm amazed it's working.

I have put a stick of ecc ram in a non ecc board before. The board could see the ram was there, but didn't know how to utilize it.

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hks85

yeah thats what i was thinking... im not sure its even working at all. time to benchmark

hks85

benchmarks done with results that are inconclusive...



I ran soft sandra memmory BW, 3 times on each ECC setting. scores were averaged with the following.

:::NO ECC:::
10.77 GB/s
10.76 GB/s
10.79 GB/s
average=10.773 GB/s


:::ECC RAM ONLY:::
10.69 GB/s
10.64 GB/s
10.63 GB/s
average=10.653 GB/s

::ECC RAM AND ECC CPU:::
10.85 GB/s
10.87 GB/s
10.86 GB/s
average=10.86 GB/s

As you can see, max ECC was actually faster... at least for the ram in this test, who knows how accurate this short test was

Cavi

I have the same motherboard you do, and haven't touched ECC, and would recommend to run without it.

ECC stands for "Error Correction Codes" and is a method used to detect and correct errors introduced during storage or transmission of data. Certain kinds of RAM chips inside a computer implement this technique to correct data errors and are known as ECC Memory.

Most servers use ECC RAM because they run 24/7 with gigs and gigs of memory... since this condition hardly exists on consumer PC's, non-ECC memory is used.

I don't think your modules are ECC, and would therefore not benefit from the feature being turned on.

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hks85

I know what ECC is, parity, 1d & 2d, RS coding, turbo coding etc etc... Im wondering if the ECC on this mobo works without actually having ECC specific ram. I dont see why not. ECC can actually all be done through software. what do you think you are doing when you burn a CD?