By: Gabriele Svelto (gabriele.svelto.delete@this.gmail.com), January 2, 2021 6:51 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com) on January 1, 2021 9:58 pm wrote:
> Thanks, that's very nice. However, it doesn't tell me much about why is AMD calling it "unofficial"
> support. Will 1 in 4 CPU have non-working ECC? 1 in 100? Or will Windows refuse to enable ECC
> error reporting if support isn't official? Is it the same for new Zen 3 Ryzens?
It works fine on Windows too, I checked and corrected errors are filed in the event log as I would expect. Considering motherboard vendors explicitly state that ECC memory is supported I don't think it's likely for processors to not support it - unless explicitly stated. I have tested both Ryzen 1 and Ryzen 2 processors but didn't get a chance to test Ryzen 3 yet though I doubt they'd disabled the feature. My guess is that AMD doesn't really care about self-built ECC rigs. What they care about is that OEMs don't ship ECC-enabled systems for businesses without using their "Pro" offerings. That's a form of market segmentation if you will, but a rather gentle one compared to Intel's absurd SKU lineup.
For ASUS motherboards for example it seems that their ROG, TUF and PRIME lines all have ECC support (besides the Workstation line obviously). The PRIME motherboards are quite cheap. They're not the cheapest around but they're not overpriced "gaming" motherboards with useless frills.
ASRock also seems to have widespread support. Other vendors are hit-and-miss. Gigabyte seems to support it in many of their motherboards but some within the same series do not (their specs state that they support using ECC modules but that they will work in non-ECC mode). These seems to be the cheapest they have to offer (we're talking motherboards in the 50-70€ range).
> In most cases, I just rather buy an actual server CPU.
You can't go wrong with that if you don't mind the price difference.
> Thanks, that's very nice. However, it doesn't tell me much about why is AMD calling it "unofficial"
> support. Will 1 in 4 CPU have non-working ECC? 1 in 100? Or will Windows refuse to enable ECC
> error reporting if support isn't official? Is it the same for new Zen 3 Ryzens?
It works fine on Windows too, I checked and corrected errors are filed in the event log as I would expect. Considering motherboard vendors explicitly state that ECC memory is supported I don't think it's likely for processors to not support it - unless explicitly stated. I have tested both Ryzen 1 and Ryzen 2 processors but didn't get a chance to test Ryzen 3 yet though I doubt they'd disabled the feature. My guess is that AMD doesn't really care about self-built ECC rigs. What they care about is that OEMs don't ship ECC-enabled systems for businesses without using their "Pro" offerings. That's a form of market segmentation if you will, but a rather gentle one compared to Intel's absurd SKU lineup.
For ASUS motherboards for example it seems that their ROG, TUF and PRIME lines all have ECC support (besides the Workstation line obviously). The PRIME motherboards are quite cheap. They're not the cheapest around but they're not overpriced "gaming" motherboards with useless frills.
ASRock also seems to have widespread support. Other vendors are hit-and-miss. Gigabyte seems to support it in many of their motherboards but some within the same series do not (their specs state that they support using ECC modules but that they will work in non-ECC mode). These seems to be the cheapest they have to offer (we're talking motherboards in the 50-70€ range).
> In most cases, I just rather buy an actual server CPU.
You can't go wrong with that if you don't mind the price difference.
