- Linus Torvalds may not have been polite about it
but he was definitely right.
While PC gamers enjoy blazing fast tech
in their gaming rigs at home, they have paid a price.
Thanks to Intel's innovative strategy
of intentionally disabling features,
then giving them back to you in a different
more expensive product,
this ECC memory that I'm holding
actually physically fits in this slot, but it won't work.
At least, not fully.
But guess who's got your back, gamers?
Facebook.
No, I'm just kidding.
It's AMD.
It's always AMD, isn't it?
While they haven't fully validated the feature,
AMD at least had the decency to leave ECC support enabled
on their consumer platforms,
leaving it up to motherboard manufacturers to implement.
And guess what?
Some of them have.
That means that in theory,
you could have the stability of a server
right in your very own gaming rig
raising the question, well, should you?
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(upbeat music)
Before we can say, if we should use it
we need to understand what ECC memory actually is.
ECC stands for error correction code
which essentially means the RAM uses clever tricks
and specialized code to find
and even correct in real time, errors in memory,
or actually the same principle can apply to storage.
To do that, ECC RAM modules need extra memory chips
to store parody data,
which can tell the memory controller on your CPU,
what the value of a bit is supposed to be.
See here's the thing,
both of these sticks are labeled 32 gigabytes
but this one clearly has nine chips on it
instead of the normal eight.
Now there are a number
of different error correction methods
but the most common is SECDED or SECDED Hamming code
which can silently correct for a single bit flip
or detect when two bits have flipped.
And in some cases even inform the user
that there's been an error.
Now what's a bit flip?
I'm glad you asked.
It's a spontaneous change in the stored value of a bit
either from a zero to a one or vice versa
and it can be caused by minor hardware failure
or even external factors such as cosmic rays.
No, but really,
and its impact can be tremendous.
Research labs that run simulations, for example,
need ECC memory to prevent instabilities
or incorrect values during their calculations.
For example, without ECC, a bit flip
could change a bytes value
potentially leading to an inaccurate result
or even system failure depending on the circumstances.
But I hear you calling out
from your Mountain-Dew-decorated desk
and Doritos dust-coated fingers,
what does this mean for me, the average gamer?
Well, I'm glad you asked that too.
Although games or work from home
usually aren't as high stakes
as high-precision lab research,
RAM errors can happen to any system regardless
of what it's being used for or where it is.
And these aren't detectable
by most normal consumer hardware.
So they can either go completely unnoticed
or affect a critical bit causing program instability,
system instability, or even a full-on crash.
So even if ECC would only kick
in very occasionally just like using RAID
to protect against a physical drive failure...
- Holy (beep).
(groans)
Oh, it's a precaution
that in an ideal world, we would all take all the time.
So how do you do it?
Well, pretty easily, actually.
There are different types of ECC memory.
UDIMMs, RDMS, LRDIMs and FBDIMs
but only UDIMMs will work with our Ryzen setup.
So that simplifies our choices a little bit.
The reason is that the other types
of DIMS have various types of registers
which are designed to take load off
of the CPU's memory controller
and allow the system to address a greater capacity
of RAM per module and a greater number of modules overall.
Now that trade-off in servers
and in the data center is worthwhile for the extra latency
but on a desktop, we don't really want that anyway.
So we kidded ourselves out with four 32 gig sticks
of 3,200 megahertz memory from NEMIX and all right,
we're ready to start gaming, right?
Let's game.
Not quite, these RAM modules are unbuffered.
So they'll actually work
in any motherboard that supports their capacity
and the DDR4 standard.
But ECC that ninth chip per side will only be active
if we choose a motherboard
that explicitly supports the feature.
Now we had originally intended to use this one
from Asrock Rack
but we had some difficulty adjusting memory timings.
So we switched over to an ASUS B550M-A prime motherboard
which explicitly lists ECC support.
To max out our system, because we can,
we're using four of these
to give us a total of 128 gigabytes of RAM
in our gaming system.
And we're hoping that because they run at high-speed
similar to gaming modules
although not as fast, we won't be giving up
too much performance when we pair it up
with our Ryzen 9 3900 XT and RTX 2080 Super.
And then we're going to be comparing
to some crucial ballistics.
And wow, these numbers really aren't impressing anyone
that is, unlike our CPU pillow from LTTstar.com
are you gonna throw that to me.
Ah, there it is (laughs).
In games, the ECC memory hardly makes any difference at all.
Which if you think about it, kind of is impressive.
Here's the thing, even though
both of these kits are clocked at 3,200 megahertz
ECC memory tends to run at higher latencies.
Even if you don't have a register
and these NEMIX modules are no exception to that rule.
The worst performance loss was about 6% in CS GO.
And otherwise we were basically within our margin of error.
So, okay, how about productivity?
I mean, this stuff is designed
for workstation and server use, right?
So let's crunch some numbers.
And if I didn't tell you
that these were different configurations
you probably wouldn't know.
The difference in performance is even less pronounced
than in the few games we tested.
So if you were hoping for a performance uplift
by spending considerably more on ECC memory
you're in for a big disappointment
but you also probably weren't paying attention
to anything that I said up until now anyway,
ECC isn't about performance and it never was.
It's about reliability
which is why Linus Torvalds was so upset
about the way that Intel artificially locked it
out of their consumer platforms
effectively driving up the cost of entry.
I mean, I can see why Intel did it.
ECC is critical for professional work
where procurement departments are spending money
they didn't have to earn anyway
and won't care about the extra cost.
As long as it has some benefit to their business.
It's only a nice to have for everyone else
but he made a couple of other excellent points.
First, that the marketing that ECC shouldn't be important
to gamers or over clockers is nonsense.
A hundred percent man, like what?
Regular people aren't doing anything important
and they should just deal with random crashes
and then have no idea what caused them
even if it was a defective memory module?
And guys for years, I've been saying
overclocking your system memory isn't worth it.
You know why I've said that?
Because under normal circumstances
with unbuffered, non-ECC dims,
you have no way of knowing
if it's operating correctly at your overclocked speed.
If it had ECC, it would spit
out an error right away when you push it too far.
And his other point was that
as memory speeds have continued to ramp up,
it's become more and more essential
to the point where they can't keep ignoring it.
DDR five actually has ECC built right into the standard now.
So the bottom line
is if you're all about redlining performance
and saving a buck, ECC probably isn't going to make it
into your gaming rig yet.
But if you want the utmost in stability
and you don't mind losing a few FPS here and there,
hey, at least AMD gives you the option.
So thanks, AMD,
and thanks Linus for bringing this to everyone's attention
in your characteristic, not to mention charming manner.
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
investigating the performance differences
between gaming RAM and ECC memory
on Ryzen, you might also enjoy our look at different speeds
of gaming RAM on Ryzen and how they impact performance.
That's a good one.