Will I be able to use ECC memory?

[Guest]

I'm looking to upgrade to 8GB of DDR2 memory, and the cheapest options on eBay that I can find are all ECC. My motherboard is a HP OEM board from an xw4400 Workstation (Intel i975X chipset). In the manual, it says configurations of this PC were available with ECC memory. Does that mean that this board would be too? I have a Q6600, which as far as I know supports ECC, so the CPU isn't a problem.

[RuLeZ]

The board supports ECC, but I dont know about the CPU, I would say no, but wait for more answers.

[agent_x007]

This OEM workstation does support ECC, but not Buffered DDR2 RAM : LINK.
Q6600 CPU doesn't have a IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) build-in, so it can't support memory of any kind.
Memory support on LGA 775 is north bridge (or chipset) job.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

This OEM does NOT support ECC or Buffered DDR2 RAM : LINK.

It says it supports ECC unbuffered. What's the difference between buffered and unbuffered?

[agent_x007]

Yes I readed that wrongly, I edited my post.

Buffered memory has a buffer between IMC and RAM chips, which takes care of data handling (it enables higher capacity modules) : LINK. RAM that uses Buffering can also be called FB-DIMM.
Un-Buffered memory is directly accessable by IMC.
It's faster than buffered memory, but it can't reach as high capacity per DIMM.

ECC memory has additional RAM chips, that act as storage for fault finding (Error Correction Code) in stored data. Example : LINK.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, agent_x007 said:

Yes I readed that wrongly, I edited my post.

Buffered memory has a buffer between IMC and RAM chips, which takes care of data handling to high capacity sticks : LINK. This RAM type can also be called FB-DIMM.

ECC memory has additional RAM chips, that act as storage for fault finding (Error Correction Code) in stored data. Example : LINK.

So if I bought buffered ECC, would the system just not POST, or would the ECC functionality be disabled? Non ECC/unbuffered ECC seems to be a bit more expensive.

[agent_x007]

You won't get a POST (probably with "no RAM installed" type error along with it).

Non ECC + Non Buff = Standard RAM.
It's more expensive because it can be used on all MB's supporting that memory type (memory type = DDR2, DDR3, etc.).