im trying to add more ram but dont want to buy the wrong thing.what is ecc I heard you cant mix ecc and none ecc ?by the way my mobo is K7MNF-64 manufactured by FIC ram type-DDR PC3200 DIMM total ram capacity is 2048MB bus speed 200 MHz 184 pins. right now I have samsung 512 MB ram pc 3200 u-30331-82 if I add another 512 will it have to be the same exact kind?or should I try to find a 1Gb cant afford 2 of them.thanks for any info.
Mixing ECC and non ECC is a bad idea. As for finding the exact same RAM it would be a good idea, if you can then great, if not then try and find some RAM with similar timings. There have been people in the past with problems when mixing RAM speeds/latencies and others who've had no problems what-so-ever. Hope that helps. *Matt
ECC=Error Checking and Correction. You'll find it on server and some workstation motherboards. Basically, it adds the ability to double check data in stored in RAM and make sure there aren't errors and fix them as needed. This causes a slight hit in speed, but for data integrity, this is worth it. Desktop and enthusiast motherboards don't come with ECC requirements. You can buy ECC and it will work, but you'll pay for a feature you can't make use of. If your motherboard requires ECC it will explicitly say so in the manual and probably somewhere on the silkscreen of the motherboard.
My old ECS p6bat supports ECC RAM. What i'd like to know is why it can handle more ECC RAM then standard RAM? For example, the manual states a maximum of 384MB (128MB x3) of standard RAM, yet 768MB (256MB x3) of ECC RAM. Do you know why this is?
