On Feb 2,  9:46am, Wolfgang Rupprecht wrote:
} Subject: Re: VIA VP2 chipset
} 
} > Greg A. Woods wrote:
} > | The question is more like:  Why would you ever *not* want ECC?????
} 
} Not all of the required operations to do ECC are in parallel with
} other operations.  Turning on ECC on the Intel chipsets, for example,
} will slow things down a bit.

Yes.

} The question is, is the warm fuzzy worth it to you?

Yes.

} My old Sparc-SLC boat anchor had parity, so I could watch the
} occasional errors.  In 2 years of almost continuous on time I never
} got a single parity error.  Then I got a Kingston expansion kit and it
} would get one parity error every month or so.  Replacing the offending
} SIMM fixed things again such that I never had parity errors again even
} with the expanded memory.

I've got a couple Sparc 2's with parity memory, and I can pretty much
count on one memory parity panic per year.  If this happens at an
inconvenient time, I can lose a significant amount of work (long running
simulations, etc. -- well not on these machines anymore).  Our newer
Suns with ECC memory log the occasional correctable error and keep
on chugging.  The only unscheduled downtime for them is when the power
is out long enough to run the UPS batteries down.

			---  Truck