RDRAM question

[Swamp Fox]

I'm considering an upgrade one of these days while memory is cheap and have a couple of questions if anyone knows...

What s the difference between ECC and non-ECC in the memory?

...and how much difference does the mhz make in performance? (I see 700 mhz and 800 mhz for sale)

I like to use my computer for very memory intensive games like B-172 and other flight simulators.

[NH99Fan]

Originally posted by Swamp Fox
I'm considering an upgrade one of these days while memory is cheap and have a couple of questions if anyone knows...

What s the difference between ECC and non-ECC in the memory?

...and how much difference does the mhz make in performance? (I see 700 mhz and 800 mhz for sale)

I like to use my computer for very memory intensive games like B-172 and other flight simulators.

ECC (Error Code Checking) memory has built in logic to handle a number of access errors (usually caused by bad programming in the OS or Application or the occasional hardware burp typically cause by bad power consistency such as brownouts and circuit overloading). The basic gist is that it has extra buffering so that data doesn't get overwritten in the event of a bad address call. This is nice to have if you're a power user doing a lot of number crunching (compiling of code, 3D-Animation RENDERING, etc), however isn't that necessary for the average home user. If you're thinking about getting ECC memory, make sure you check the specs on your motherboard. Most average consumer grade MB's don't support ECC Memory...You may have to upgrade the MB depending on which one you have.

Non-ECC doesn't have this extra logic, ergo it's cheaper. As I said above, this type of memory is fine for the average home user.

As far as the MHz goes, this is the rate at which the memory can process the requests that are sent to it. For example 700 MHz = approximately 700,000,000 requests per second. At first glance, you might think, "Wow I can get an extra 100,000,000 requests per second if I go with the 800MHz!"...but are you going to really notice the difference? Probably not, especially if you are running a fast processor like a P4 for AMD Athlon. A lot of times, users tend to blame memory speed as the culprit to slow performance. Although it does happen every once in a while, memory is rarely the bottleneck in the systems that are out today.

Also when refering to processor speed, keep in mind that a higher MHz number doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get faster performance. If you read some of the white papers from Intel and AMD, you'll actually see that for them to get the higher processor speeds, they actually had to give up a shocking number of requests that go through the pipeline and cache.

If you're looking into improving your 3D gaming experience, I would strongly recommend you getting a decent 64MB 3D graphics card, if you don't already have one. I am currently looking into getting the ATI Radeon 8500. This is a great 64 MB card that allows you to hook up two monitors at once (Going price is between $250 and $300). I am currently running a 3DFX VooDoo 5500 64MB card and have been very happy with its performance in Win98 and Win2k. The bad thing about this card is that 3DFX went out of business last year and driver support is getting more scarce as time goes by.

Getting a decent 3D graphics card is where you'll notice the most improvement with the flight sims.

Hope this helps! ;)

[Swamp Fox]

I know it's been a while, but THANKS, you did help me a lot!!

:)

[NH99Fan]

Not a problem! :D BTW, some extra info I found out recently, beware of ECC memory, especially while running an AMD processor. I recently encountered some funky things happening with certain apps while using Windows 2000 Pro. Things like blue screens of death, video renders not working properly, slow performance, etc. Turns out that there was a low level conflict with the ECC method of the memory and the OS. When we replaced the memory with Non-ECC memory, everything worked great. Just some food for thought!

[BenchRacer]

In theory ECC memory shouldn't be used on anything other than servers and mission cricital workstations as it provides some extra data integrity, and also runs a touch slower than non-ecc memory. Not to mention that the motherboard has to support ECC which most consumer-level motherboards don't.

[NH99Fan]

Very good point BR. The workstation we had the ECC memory on was a video rendering station. My friend at the time, thought that it would make an improvement to have ECC memory. Guess we found out the hard way that it wasn't good for rendering broadcast quality video. LOL