Is ECC memory any use?

[Chris Snook]

Timothy Murphy 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?
> I see there is quite a lot of work
> in getting ECC testing incorporated into the Linux kernel.
> But even if it were there, would it be very valuable?
> 
> I have a feeling that disk errors are far more likely
> than RAM errors.
> Is that right?
> 
> 

Depends who's buying.  Few people do anything on "personal" systems that really 
justifies ECC RAM, though I'm sure the exceptions are probably on this list.  If 
you're doing any kind of business work where uptime is important, or any kind of 
technical work where bit flips could cause nasty side effects, it's probably 
worth buying the ECC, unless you're doing high-end graphics where a stray pixel 
won't make a difference and most of your power budget is going to the GPUs.

	-- Chris