On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 01:07:35 +0000 Timothy Murphy <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I'm getting memory for a very old (P2B-LS) Asus motherboard, > and I see I can get ECC memory for some 20% more. > > Is there any point in getting this? It depends what for. ECC memory will self correct errors (the ECC framework in the kernel just deals with nice user space reporting of this and ECC unrecoverable errors). If you are doing complex scientific processing or banking where an error isn't acceptable then its essential. If you can tolerate the small change of a bit flip ever year or two then its far less of a concern. It also depends on the amount of RAM - more ram = more change of flips. Disk errors should be different - the odds of an undetected disk error are minute. The odds of catastrophic failure obviously are rather more clear. Alan
