Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sweet spot for overclocking ECC ram is still before it starts malfunctioning. If it's clocked higher but is correcting for errors it will still be slower.
Entirely depends on error rate
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ECC RAM should be a human right
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#22ECC RAM would actually be a boon to everyone, including gamers. ECC means not only that you know precisely when you've gone too far with overclocking, but potentially allows overclocking a bit further, relying on that some amount of trouble can now be tolerated. It also means you're not going to break your OS by playing with this stuff. Memory corruption carries a huge risk of disk corruption, which can mean things l…
totally embarrassingly naive question : why bother overclocking ?
Some people prefer to trade off stability for a slight performance improvement. With modern hardware I don't think it's worth it to be honest. I want my computer to work day in and day out even if it means a 2% lower score in some benchmark.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#23Commodity PCs back in the 80s and 90s didn't have error correction but they did have parity (iirc). Correction requires three extra bits per byte compared to parity only carrying one extra bit per byte. I recall around 1990 you could get your 30pin SIMs as 9-bit (parity) or 8-bit (no-parity), and virtually all of the PCs at the time wanted the 9 bit modules. Parity can't correct errors, but at least it can cause an exception when you read something that's had a bit flip.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#24Still wild to me we lost ECC RAM. It used to be standard in PCs. Does Apple hardware come with ECC RAM? If anyone could make it make sense as a business, it's them.
When was it standard? It’s been the high-end extra thing for as long as I can remember.
I know the Pentium Pro/2/3 chipsets and motherboards all(?) supported it. Unsure of the Pentium 1 as the 430TX on my Tyan Tomcat IV doesn't, and that is a dual processor board. 486 and earlier likely depended on the chipset as there were many.
At work I have two working slot 1 PIII 800's each with 1GB ECC (4x 256MB DIMMS) on a regular Asus board (doing nothing but waiting to go home with me one day). The board reports the RAM is in fact ECC and that it is enabled.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#25Latest Intel desktop CPUs (i.e. i9-13900KF) supports ECC with the W680 chipset.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#26Commodity PCs back in the 80s and 90s didn't have error correction but they did have parity (iirc). Correction requires three extra bits per byte compared to parity only carrying one extra bit per byte. I recall around 1990 you could get your 30pin SIMs as 9-bit (parity) or 8-bit (no-parity), and virtually all of the PCs at the time wanted the 9 bit modules. Parity can't correct errors, but at least it can cause an e…
Yes I can indeed recall systems being shipped with 4x 9-bits sticks.
And god the horrific price of thoses sticks...
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
totally embarrassingly naive question : why bother overclocking ?
Some people prefer to trade off stability for a slight performance improvement. With modern hardware I don't think it's worth it to be honest. I want my computer to work day in and day out even if it means a 2% lower score in some benchmark.
There are also a lot of cases where you can overclock without sacrificing stability. The standard clock speed for any line of processors is simply the minimum it is tested for. But you sometimes get lucky and can get a better chip with more viable transistors. So you can boost the clock ok those and reap the benefits without any drawbacks.
There are sites and services that do "binning" where they test the specific chips and you can buy ones that have been vetted to clock higher.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#28Still wild to me we lost ECC RAM. It used to be standard in PCs. Does Apple hardware come with ECC RAM? If anyone could make it make sense as a business, it's them.
When was it standard? It’s been the high-end extra thing for as long as I can remember.
I was thinking of 386 era computers and strictly speaking it was just parity RAM, not ECC. Which often led to annoyances when a single parity error would cause your whole computer to halt.
Wikipedia says "By the mid-1990s, most DRAM had dropped parity checking as manufacturers felt confident that it was no longer necessary.". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_parity
I'd love to read a technical deep dive on RAM reliability over time. You'd think with increasing memory cell density and overall larger RAM the number of absolute errors on a desktop computer would be going up over time.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#29Latest Intel desktop CPUs (i.e. i9-13900KF) supports ECC with the W680 chipset.
One of the main reasons I buy Xeon desktops is the ECC. With 128 GB of memory, and 1 bitflip/GB/year average error rate, it seems too risky to not use ECC for production work.
Re: ECC RAM should be a human right
#30Latest Intel desktop CPUs (i.e. i9-13900KF) supports ECC with the W680 chipset.
I wish those motherboards didn't cost $450+, I've contemplated building a home server with a 13th gen + ECC because you also get quicksync onboard.