Originally posted by EvilGuru
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Is ECC RAM worth it for a desktop PC?
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Last edited by brosis; 24 September 2013, 01:58 PM.
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Originally posted by JS987 View Postthere is too limited offer of fanless 28nm discrete GPUs.
I'm watching available graphics card long time. There was always problem with fanless cards which usually have outdated GPU, slow memory or dual slot cooler.
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Originally posted by brosis View PostI do not. Everything is CRC'ed or checksummed or running ECC. Caches, packets, you name it. Almost all discrete GPUs use ECC, you were probably fooled by Quadro - its software ECC and only for extreme freaks, since GDDR3+ have ECC functionality. CPU is through and through ECC'ed, I don't know about system buses - I suspect they are. Hard drives caches are ECC'ed since ... eternity. SATA has CRCing. Hard drive low level logic does CRC on sectors. Even FS are now providing reliable transparent methods of detecting bit rot, mistakenly corrected by HDD logic for example, and fix that. The only one left non ECCed/CRCed in desktop is RAM. And a lot of stuff is projected into it, so it is worth it.
System RAM is the weakest link.
Another point to consider on "is it worth it" is your usage pattern. If you reboot daily, or multiple times per week (like Microsoft OS's tend to do) then the error probability is reduced, since memory is wiped at power off or reboot. If you keep your system running 24/7 and rarely reboot, as many (most?) Linux desktop users tend to do, then it becomes more of an issue, since a potential memory error remains resident for an extended period of time.
Obviously in a server (non-Microsoft) scenario, where the OS may be up and running for months or even years at a time between reboots, the probability of a memory error is quite high, which explains why ECC memory is the defacto standard in every server, regardless of vendor.
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