To be ECC or not to be ECC; That, is the question...

This is more of a poll of Ozzu's various hardware expertise and experience. My brother-in-law is using one of my older systems which I gave him: P3 1Ghz w/ 1Gb PC133 SDRAM on an old DFI board.

Now he has some usuable parts I want to bring over, namely: Asus built nVidia FX5200 w/ 256mb DDR & the always lovely (with minimal sharp edges for cut free fingers while building) Hermes God-of-speed case. He also has a firewire and USB 2.0 expansion card.

Now to get to the point. I want to build a 32bit AMD system (Athlon XP). I need a good single proc mobo that can support ECC memory. Now is this useful? Or is it just a waste of time? I have ECC in some of my servers and these things just don't crash, ever. I have > 1 year uptimes on some of them. But I never had ECC in a desktop system running WinXP. Now obviously this thing will be running XP pro sp2 vol lic, and might actually see some game play. They also have a new Ipod and an intel digital camera to hook to this.

I have for most of my days as a computer geek, have loved Asus motherboards and AMD processors. However I have built other systems (depending on the era). I certainly can not specify to price an Intel system because with an AMD I can get so much more. But I am open to debate on this.

I do however want to have at least 1 gig of DDR400.

Thanks, I'm looking forward to hearing what you all have to say.

ECC RAM isn't used on many Desktop system, specially gaming systems cause its a little slower, and gamers want every bit of SPEED they can get... also its not too useful cause your Desktop, unlike a server, is going to be rebooted alot, comparatively speaking.... you wont leave your Desktop running for a year, cause you'll have to reboot for Drivers updates, and/ or Windows Updates etc.. so I would just get good quality non-ECC RAM from like Crucial, never had any problems with their RAM.

Okay.... I guess ECC is out.

These are my two systems:
1:

AMD Athlon 3000+ 333mhz
1.5Gb (3x512) Kingston Hyper-X PC2700 DDR
Asus A7N8X Deluxe
ATI 9700Pro AIW (POS CARD!!!)
120GB WD SATA drive
80Gb WD Caviar SE IDE
40Gb WD Caviar IDE
LG 52x CDRW
Pioneer 16x DVD

2:

AMD Athlon 1800+ 266Mhz
512Mb Kingston ValuRam PC2700 DDR
Asus A7V600
nVidia FX5200 128Mb (I LOVE this card!)
Maxtor 80Gb IDE
Optorite 8x DVD-R/RW +R/RW
LG 52x CDRW

How about I give the Asus A7N8X-Deluxe, the 1800+ and the 512Mb ValuRam to my Brother-In-Law (BIL) and I'll put the 3000+ and the 1.5Gb into my secondary system. I'll then buy an AMD Athlon 3200+ and 1.5Gb (or 2Gb) of Kingston Hyper-X into my main system on an Asus A7N8x-E Deluxe. Then I can charge my BIL only like $350 and I'll throw in a 120Gb WDC IDE drive. The only problem is for some reason Ram got SUPER EXPENSIVE. When I bought my system the 1.5Gb of memory I bought was not that expensive.

Ram is almost as high as it was when that earthquake rocked Turkey.

yeah RAM prices are kinda high.. is their a reason you need 1.5 GB.. you doing Video Editing or HUGE Photoshop image editing or something.. if all you are doing is playing games and surfing the net then 512MB or 1GB is more then enough.. And you could use the money saved and get a DVD-Burner or something.. or heck.. u can maybe upgrade to a 64bit CPU. that would be sweet.

I have ADHD so I need to run at least 3 things at once. So literally I would have VS.NET open, a DVD playing, and Counter Strike on all at the same time.

And thats just one system, I normally have 2 or even 3. And I use them all for everything.


Also, and its like having a 500hp car. You know you would never need that much HP to get you to work and back. But boy, isn't it great to have?

ill agree with you on this, and you guys have had an entire 1 vote!!! congrats. lol y dont ppl vote?? u have a sh*t load of visitors, but nobody votes???

poly

Alot of people seem to prefer explaining themselves rather than clicking a button & being done with it I guess

yeah i supose so, but they should still vote and then explain why they voted for it...

poly

Why not have 2 monitors running off one PC?

I run an ATI 9800 Pro AIW (got rid of the 9700), only single DVI output.

Plus I have multiple different set ups on the comps, like one may have FreeBSD on it or Windows Server 2003 Enterprise.

Hey GT500Shlby, why do you think that the 9700 pro aiw is a pos? Just curious, I have one and it just recently started messing up, so I had to send it into ATI to be repaired, hopefully replaced.