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Re: ECC vs non-parity RAM

Richard Chycoski (richard@wizard.ucs.sfu.ca)
Mon, 21 Jul 97 07:23:50 -0700

> I currently have 128 megabytes of EDO non-parity RAM. I am thinking
> of getting a new motherboard and upgrading to EDO/ECC RAM. Is it
> woth the cost? Do people notice strange crashes when they use non-parity
> RAM or am I worrying over nothing? My chipset is the Intel 82430 VX
>
> miles@skybus.com

I would certainly go for the ECC RAM in a new machine (I just did on the machine on my desk with
64 MB of ECC RAM in a 200 MHz Pentium Pro). With the number of bits (and the size of the memory
cells!) involved, the small extra cost is cheap insurance.

However, whether or not it's worth replacing what you have depends on having another use (or a
buyer) for your existing RAM, and also how paranoid you are (:-).

I liked the old mainframes that used to log reports about all of the ECC single bit failures (and
the program crashes for the double bit failures! :-), but I suspect that the hit rate is small
enough with modern memory that this wouldn't provide me with a lot of entertainment...

---
- Richard Chycoski
  Senior Systems Consultant
  Simon Fraser University
  Academic Computing Services
  richard@sfu.ca