By: Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com), January 2, 2021 11:10 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Linus Torvalds (torvalds.delete@this.linux-foundation.org) on January 2, 2021 12:21 pm wrote:
> Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com) on January 1, 2021 10:28 pm wrote:
> >
> > So yeah, I do very much agree AMD has superior offering. ECC doesn't really matter here though.
>
> ECC absolutely matters.
I mean it doesn't matter for AMDs success or for the fact that they are currently making better processors than Intel. Or do you think that without their unofficial support for ECC Ryzens would be selling less?
> Go out and search for ECC DIMMs - it's really hard to find. Yes - probably entirely thanks
> to AMD - it may have been gotten slightly better lately, but that's exactly my point.
It wasn't hard at all. I bought mine (about a month ago) from a small family business. Other small retailer also had ECC DIMMs available, but the first one was selling the sort of Ethernet cables I needed so I chose them instead. Only hard part was that I accidentally ordered buffered DIMMs instead of unbuffered first.
[Snipped out praise for ECC because I agree]
> > I don't really see AMD's unofficial ECC support being a big deal.
>
> I disagree. The difference between "the market for working memory actually exists" and "screw
> consumers over by selling them subtly unreliable hardware" is an absolutely enormous one.
>
> And the fact that it's "unofficial" for AMD doesn't matter. It works. And it allows
> the markets to - admittedly probably very slowly - start fixing themselves.
I think unofficial support is problematic for two reasons:
1) Hard to market by retailers, because they can't really say that Ryzen supports ECC memory[1].
2) It's obviously cutting some corners, because otherwise it would be official, and AMD isn't telling what that means in practice.
[1] Maybe it doesn't matter and retailers wouldn't use ECC for marketing even if the support was official.
AMD has Pro series available, but it's OEM only, has less models than standard (especially missing equivalent top model), and every model is slower than equivalent standard model. So worse in every way except ECC.
Frankly, I was hoping for more when the first Ryzens with unofficial support came out. The fact that it's still unofficial after three generations makes me less confident in it than I was back then.
> ECC DRAM (or just parity) used to be standard and easily accessible back when. ECC
> and parity isn't a new thing. It was literally killed by bad Intel policies.
I'm old enough to remember :D .
-JLarja
> Jukka Larja (roskakori2006.delete@this.gmail.com) on January 1, 2021 10:28 pm wrote:
> >
> > So yeah, I do very much agree AMD has superior offering. ECC doesn't really matter here though.
>
> ECC absolutely matters.
I mean it doesn't matter for AMDs success or for the fact that they are currently making better processors than Intel. Or do you think that without their unofficial support for ECC Ryzens would be selling less?
> Go out and search for ECC DIMMs - it's really hard to find. Yes - probably entirely thanks
> to AMD - it may have been gotten slightly better lately, but that's exactly my point.
It wasn't hard at all. I bought mine (about a month ago) from a small family business. Other small retailer also had ECC DIMMs available, but the first one was selling the sort of Ethernet cables I needed so I chose them instead. Only hard part was that I accidentally ordered buffered DIMMs instead of unbuffered first.
[Snipped out praise for ECC because I agree]
> > I don't really see AMD's unofficial ECC support being a big deal.
>
> I disagree. The difference between "the market for working memory actually exists" and "screw
> consumers over by selling them subtly unreliable hardware" is an absolutely enormous one.
>
> And the fact that it's "unofficial" for AMD doesn't matter. It works. And it allows
> the markets to - admittedly probably very slowly - start fixing themselves.
I think unofficial support is problematic for two reasons:
1) Hard to market by retailers, because they can't really say that Ryzen supports ECC memory[1].
2) It's obviously cutting some corners, because otherwise it would be official, and AMD isn't telling what that means in practice.
[1] Maybe it doesn't matter and retailers wouldn't use ECC for marketing even if the support was official.
AMD has Pro series available, but it's OEM only, has less models than standard (especially missing equivalent top model), and every model is slower than equivalent standard model. So worse in every way except ECC.
Frankly, I was hoping for more when the first Ryzens with unofficial support came out. The fact that it's still unofficial after three generations makes me less confident in it than I was back then.
> ECC DRAM (or just parity) used to be standard and easily accessible back when. ECC
> and parity isn't a new thing. It was literally killed by bad Intel policies.
I'm old enough to remember :D .
-JLarja
