ecc vs. non parity memory?

[AG]

Anybody have an opinion? Since the VI instruments have the most significant effect (and dependance) on my RAM, I wanted to ask fellow VI owners..

I'm buying a new G5 and the option for ECC or Non ECC memory came up. There is a fair price and performance (speed) advantage to the non parity memory but my understanding is that ECC ram is more stable. How stable do I need to be? I'm a musician. If the word gets out that I'm looking for stability, people will talk. I'll get pigeon holed into doing life insurance spots.

In all seriousness... Anybody raving about their awesome ECC ram and how it kicks ass and gets them all sorts of chicks? Do I need it? I'm happily married so I just need to kick ass.

-Adam.

[Vagn Luv]

Get non-ECC. ECC are usually a bit slower. Iirc, ECC is mostly used in servers, but what do I know. [:P]

[cmpsr2000]

ECC is basically a mechanism for checking the memory as it's being read or written to correct any errors using parity checks. What this means for you, is that everytime you go to stream a sample you have to wait an extra few clock ticks for the ECC chip to check the parity of what you're reading from the memory.

ECC = slow = bad for streaming audio
ECC = more accurate = good for retriving correct data from a huge database on a coporate server.

ECC is absolutly not needed for musicians and should be avoided like the plague if you're using it in PCs that stream audio data from the hard drive through the RAM.

[AG]

That's great. Thanks very much for your advice. Non-ECC it is.

-Adam.

[mpower88]

Yes that is very helpful information. I would have chosen ecc on the surface it sounds better - but with that exlanation - obviously it's not!

Miklos.

[cmpsr2000]

NP guys, always glad to help ^^