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Questions about DDR RAM



 
 
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  #71  
Old October 10th 07, 12:06 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Nate Edel
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Posts: 225
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Frank McCoy wrote:
price-differential (in favor of Beta, BTW), they both had similar
prerecorded movies out, and the prices of the machines were almost
identical, what made VHS "win the war" was the fact that Sony thought it
owned the market; and saw no reason to upgrade or add features to their
machines. The competition did.

[...]
Pure idiocy (in my opinion anyway) on the part of Sony management.


It's not clear that they HAD similar prerecorded movies: one "fact" (no idea
if it's correct, or an urban legend) about beta which is often repeated:
Early on, Sony didn't permit porn being distributed on Beta (although it
clearly either did later, or couldn't stop it - I've a porn tapes on Beta
that I picked up on clearance well into the 90s, and saw a few on the
shelves in Mexico in the late 80s where rental tapes in general - not
specific to porn - were easier to find on Beta.)

--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
preferred email | "With all the accumulated wit and wisdom in the
is "nate" at the | world, it is pointless to try to select a few
posting domain | choice quotes." (some guy from my HS yearbook)
  #72  
Old October 10th 07, 12:21 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Frank McCoy
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Posts: 704
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt daytripper
wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:59:05 -0500, Frank McCoy wrote:

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt daytripper
wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:20:43 -0500, Frank McCoy wrote:
[blah blah ...]
Now most professionals, people who build server-boxes, probably wouldn't
be caught dead putting non-ECC memory into a system. But THEY know what
it is and is-for, what it does, and how it improves reliability.

Well, no. The *customer* has a check list, and ECC is on it. Otherwise the
"people who build server boxes" would put non-ECC memory in it and pocket the
cost differential.

However geeks like that don't talk to home-PC customers.
I'll bet most put ECC memory in their own systems at home though.

So, how many desktop chipsets actually even support ECC these days?

ALL of them do.
It's on the DIMM, not the motherboard.
Completely transparent. The mobo doesn't even know it's there.
The DIMM is just a bit bigger; and has extra chips on it.
Fits in the same slot.
You just buy PC2100 ECC memory instead of PC2100 non-ECC memory.
They meet the exact same specifications.

The only difference is the ECC memory doesn't have errors.


Ummm....No. And might I add, you really stepped in the dog poo this time...

Well ... I plan on buying some ECC memory shortly, and putting it in my
computer. PC2100 ECC memory, instead of PC100 non-ECC memory.
We'll see if it fits.

--
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  #73  
Old October 10th 07, 02:59 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Frank McCoy
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Posts: 704
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (Nate Edel) wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Frank McCoy wrote:
price-differential (in favor of Beta, BTW), they both had similar
prerecorded movies out, and the prices of the machines were almost
identical, what made VHS "win the war" was the fact that Sony thought it
owned the market; and saw no reason to upgrade or add features to their
machines. The competition did.

[...]
Pure idiocy (in my opinion anyway) on the part of Sony management.


It's not clear that they HAD similar prerecorded movies: one "fact" (no idea
if it's correct, or an urban legend) about beta which is often repeated:
Early on, Sony didn't permit porn being distributed on Beta (although it
clearly either did later, or couldn't stop it - I've a porn tapes on Beta
that I picked up on clearance well into the 90s, and saw a few on the
shelves in Mexico in the late 80s where rental tapes in general - not
specific to porn - were easier to find on Beta.)


Well, in all the local video-stores around here at the time, if you
could rent a movie in one format, it was almost certain you could rent
it in the other ... and it wasn't just a blank-tape-copy either.

I think, with the court decisions against them, Sony gave up on trying
to limit which movies were copied and went with the flow of competition.
They made more money that way.

--
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  #75  
Old October 10th 07, 03:30 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
krw
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Posts: 402
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In article ,
lid says...
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Frank McCoy wrote in part:
It shouldn't add more than 10% to the price of memory;


No, unless used for yield improvement, std 64/72 ECC must cost
at least 12.5% more for components. Due to lower market
volume, it actually costs 30-50% more


Kinda a tail-chasing argument there. It costs 30-50% more because...
It certainly wouldn't cost the manufacturers 30-50% more.

The problem isn't Intel or anybody else with the possible
exception of IBM; but there only slightly.


Why do you doubt their design choice to omit ECC?


It's not a design choice. It's a marketing choice.

The problem is custom and history. They didn't do it in
the past, for fairly good and decent reasons. They don't
do it *now* because they didn't do it in the past. That is
NOT a good reason.


Wrong. From the 8088 thru 486, almost all PCs -- IBM and
clones had parity memory. Macs did not. Only with the
Pentium SIMMs did parity morphed to ECC and begin to drop.


ECC came about because the word size got big enough that ECC cost
nothing over simple parity. Both were dropped because memory was a
significant fraction of the cost of the system.

The problem is: WITH ECC built in, probably over half the
cases of "Blue Screen of Death" or computer crashes and
foulups *could* be things of the past!


Reference please! BSoD can have many causes.
I suspect software and software patches mostly.
I keep Linux machines up for ~1 yr w/o ECC.


I agree with you here. ECC isn't going to fix M$'s crap.

Even in cases where things like poor capacitors cause
spikes, having ECC memory in the machine would obviate a
large portion of those problems.


No, because spikes often hit the busses in parallel.


So does Windows.

The original reasons of the extra logic and extra expense
just ARE NOT that relevant any more. They shouldn't
even SELL non-ECC memory, for the relatively tiny
price-differential versus the HUGE difference in reliability.
It's like selling retread tires as new ones for almost the
same price. Sure they're CHEAPER ... marginally.


Again, you presume you know better than Intel, AMD,
Dell, HP, etc.


Than their marketeers? About technical issues? Well, yes...

The worst part is, people could actually be KILLED by such
mistakes made by a computer that might have been corrected
with ECC ... Yet nobody will trace it back to that; just:
"Sorry, the computer crashed!"


Life critical computing and control machinery does
not run on PCs or with MS software.


Here you are wrong, unless you consider medical equipment
(defibrillators, life-signs monitors, and such) "non-life critical".
I couldn't count high enough to track all the PC-based hardware and
Windows crap when I was in the hospital, earlier this year. No,
being there, seeing that, didn't give me the warm fuzzies.

"I've ran my computer for years without ECC; and it ran
just FINE!" Only that ignores the freezups, crashes,
blue-screens, and other crap that got attributed to software
instead of memory failures. ;-{


Except I've run several just fine without anything
resembling BSoDs with uptimes around a year.


Anecdotes data
Even worse; error crash

These days people seem to *expect* such failures, when 99.99%
of the ones caused by bad memory (probably well over half)
could be fixed.


Reference please!

Most people ass-u-me that their memory is good; never EVER
running a memory-test other than the completely useless crap
on boot. Hell, most people, if a computer is crapping out,
just replace the whole thing.


Perhaps this is true for most, but I've run intense software
memory testers like memtest-86+ for days and weeks yet never
seen an inexplicable error.


"There are no known bugs, to which I am aware", or perhaps, "nothing
can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wr..."

--
Keith
  #76  
Old October 10th 07, 03:47 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Robert Redelmeier
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Posts: 316
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips krw wrote in part:
Kinda a tail-chasing argument there. It costs 30-50% more because...
It certainly wouldn't cost the manufacturers 30-50% more.


Yes, the argument is somewhat circular. But matches data.
No, in full quantity, it'll cost 12.5% of DRAM.

Why do you doubt their design choice to omit ECC?

It's not a design choice. It's a marketing choice.


Semantics. They choose the design they will market.
I cannot distinguish between a design choice and a
marketing choice unless marketing is pushing vaporware.

ECC came about because the word size got big enough that ECC
cost nothing over simple parity. Both were dropped because
memory was a significant fraction of the cost of the system.


.... and was not perceived as offerring commensurate benefits.
A hard disk is a bigger fraction of system cost. A floppy perhaps
somewhat smaller. Both were retained for perceived benefits.

I agree with you here. ECC isn't going to fix M$'s crap.


I doubt anything will

Again, you presume you know better than Intel, AMD,
Dell, HP, etc.


Than their marketeers? About technical issues? Well, yes...


But ECC isn't a technical issue. Including it or leaving it off does
not fundamentally change the system. It is an option to improve
reliability. The real question is: How much? If it is a lot, it
will be included. If it is not, it will be omitted for cost savings.

Again I ask: What BER data do you have to justify ECC?

Here you are wrong, unless you consider medical equipment
(defibrillators, life-signs monitors, and such) "non-life critical".
I couldn't count high enough to track all the PC-based hardware and
Windows crap when I was in the hospital, earlier this year. No,
being there, seeing that, didn't give me the warm fuzzies.


I deal with industrial controllers. I haven't seen these
in hospital, but they'd scare me too!


-- Robert


  #77  
Old October 10th 07, 03:49 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Robert Redelmeier
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Posts: 316
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips daytripper wrote in part:
Well ... I plan on buying some ECC memory shortly, and putting it in my
computer. PC2100 ECC memory, instead of PC100 non-ECC memory.
We'll see if it fits.


If you can identify the motherboard used on your system, perhaps we can save
you the trouble of returning those ECC dimms before you buy them.

If the chipset - or the motherboard implementation thereof - doesn't
explicitly support ECC dimms, you're gonna be SOL...


Not to mention that few mobos support both 168 pin PC100 and
184 pin DDR PC2100.

-- Robert


  #78  
Old October 10th 07, 03:55 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Noozer
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Posts: 450
Default Questions about DDR RAM


"Robert Redelmeier" wrote in message
et...
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips krw wrote in part:
Kinda a tail-chasing argument there. It costs 30-50% more because...
It certainly wouldn't cost the manufacturers 30-50% more.


Yes, the argument is somewhat circular. But matches data.
No, in full quantity, it'll cost 12.5% of DRAM.


....and add a 12.5% increase in the chance that the memory won't overclock as
well, since you're adding an extra chip to the timing scheme.


  #79  
Old October 10th 07, 04:21 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
daytripper
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 265
Default Questions about DDR RAM

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:21:06 -0500, Frank McCoy wrote:

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt daytripper
wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:59:05 -0500, Frank McCoy wrote:

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt daytripper
wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:20:43 -0500, Frank McCoy wrote:
[blah blah ...]
Now most professionals, people who build server-boxes, probably wouldn't
be caught dead putting non-ECC memory into a system. But THEY know what
it is and is-for, what it does, and how it improves reliability.

Well, no. The *customer* has a check list, and ECC is on it. Otherwise the
"people who build server boxes" would put non-ECC memory in it and pocket the
cost differential.

However geeks like that don't talk to home-PC customers.
I'll bet most put ECC memory in their own systems at home though.

So, how many desktop chipsets actually even support ECC these days?

ALL of them do.
It's on the DIMM, not the motherboard.
Completely transparent. The mobo doesn't even know it's there.
The DIMM is just a bit bigger; and has extra chips on it.
Fits in the same slot.
You just buy PC2100 ECC memory instead of PC2100 non-ECC memory.
They meet the exact same specifications.

The only difference is the ECC memory doesn't have errors.


Ummm....No. And might I add, you really stepped in the dog poo this time...

Well ... I plan on buying some ECC memory shortly, and putting it in my
computer. PC2100 ECC memory, instead of PC100 non-ECC memory.
We'll see if it fits.


If you can identify the motherboard used on your system, perhaps we can save
you the trouble of returning those ECC dimms before you buy them.

If the chipset - or the motherboard implementation thereof - doesn't
explicitly support ECC dimms, you're gonna be SOL...

/daytripper
  #80  
Old October 10th 07, 04:22 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips
Frank McCoy
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 704
Default Questions about DDR RAM

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Robert Redelmeier
wrote:

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips daytripper wrote in part:
Well ... I plan on buying some ECC memory shortly, and putting it in my
computer. PC2100 ECC memory, instead of PC100 non-ECC memory.
We'll see if it fits.


If you can identify the motherboard used on your system, perhaps we can save
you the trouble of returning those ECC dimms before you buy them.

If the chipset - or the motherboard implementation thereof - doesn't
explicitly support ECC dimms, you're gonna be SOL...


Not to mention that few mobos support both 168 pin PC100 and
184 pin DDR PC2100.

Um ... Typo.
That was *supposed* to be PC2100 in both cases.

--
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(_/ / (_(_/|_/ / _/ _
 




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