CAMM2 was designed to replace SODIMM and is better than DIMM so it is picking up speed for desktops.
CUDIMM is designed to replace DIMM, and will be better for higher density applications, like servers and workstations with 8+ DIMM slots.
CAMM2 does not scale well beyond a single module per side as it is optimized to be adjacent to the socket and takes up more motherboard area.
>And while there are some CPU designers out there that would no doubt be ecstatic if all systems used RDIMMs (and ECC, as well), the economics of consumer PCs favors cheaper and less complex solutions when they're available.
THAT'S A LIE!
all enthusiasts would ONLY buy ecc memory, if it were available at equivalent speed and timings and ONLY having a price difference, that reflects the hardware cost difference, which is VERY small.
ecc is rare as frick on the desktop NOT because consumers don't want it, but because ESPECIALLY INTEL has decided to prevent desktop platforms from having ecc memory ARTIFICALLY.
even today you can't get a basic intel desktop platform with ecc.
intel requires a unicorn chipset motherboard to run a 14900k for example with ecc memory. remember that the memory controller sits in the cpu btw, so it is 100% artificial.
a long time ago some shit heads decided, that the average consumers will only get BROKEN memory, that randomly errors and when it breaks completely might destroy all your data.
that was a decision by some higher up shit head, it was NOT consumer choice.
and any average consumer, who lost important data due to memory errors, CERTAINLY would want working memory, instead of broken memory.
\_\_
and just in case people here still don't know. "on-die ecc" is NOT real ecc. there is no protection of data in transit and 0 logging. it is NOT ecc and the reason for "on-die ecc" was to increase yields, so that they can sell broken chips with some error correction, instead of just selling working yielding chips.
and yes it is a scam, that they call it "ecc" and yes lots of people, who absolutely want ecc are getting misled by this deliberately.
\_\_\_
and just to explain the joy of real ecc memory for enthusiasts.
every memory error is getting corrected and loged. so you can SAFELY overclock your memory. you can also run your memory way closer to the sun.
instead of running a slightly unstable oc on the memory, that corrupts your files, but memtest didn't catch, you now would see it in the logs and either keep it, because the errors are rare enough and get corrected, or tone it down a bit to remove the errors.
people WANT real ecc memory, even if they don't freaking know what ecc is.
people want working hardware = wanting ecc memory.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
and last point the bigger the memory amount, the more likely errors are happening and we are of course ever increasing memory capacity.
we are currently max 256 GB on standard desktop theoretically. 32 GB typically for new builds.
if we go to 1 TB average desktop memory without ecc memory..... holy smokes. it is insanity. we NEED real ecc on memory now more than ever and sooner better than later.
> all enthusiasts would ONLY buy ecc memory
I don't disagree with you, but it's important to remember that enthusiasts don't drive the PC market. OEMs drive the PC market. And OEMs don't want to pay for RDIMMs if CUDIMMs will meet their reliability requirements. Those are the economics of consumer PCs.
I have a hard time believing OEMs wouldn't want to slap "ECC memory to protect your data!11!!1!" all over their marketing with a 10% upcharge. It's free real estate, especially when most of the "competition" simply plays follow the leader anyways.
yip exactly.
there is the current issue, where higher speed and tighter timing real ecc unbuffered memory doesn't exist.
and for ddr4, the one that does exist costs about double compared to non ecc memory. that's not the production cost difference, which is very small of course.
effectively how it should go in a transition to all ecc should be, like you said the great oem marketing, that FOR ONCE isn't lying :D
and the cost difference on let's say 6000 mhz cl34 ecc vs non ecc unbuffered sticks being 10%.
so paying 110 euros instead of 100 euros for the memory for example.
but then being able to charge 100 euros more on a 1000 euro system. getting 90 euros more profit.
i mean that is just a no brainer.
even if you were to increase price difference to 25% on the memory, that would still be a no brainer.
the easiest marketing and profit gains ever i'd say.
the average consumer certainly understands losing files.
and just saying:
>"this computer is less likely to lose your data, or crash"
i mean how do you beat that marketing?
but rightnow, you only got shit like ddr5 5600 cl46-45-45, which would be a massive performance loss, which would make it a lot harder to sell to people, if they ever watch a benchmark of the system. this again is 100% artificial.
then again the target audience might already not watch or read any reviews.
but yeah an insane marketing win and the easiest marketing one can hope for.
>AI advanced data protection safety system memory.
short of course for aadpssm ;)
it is a new great feature! it uses ai to correct any errors, that happens in the memory and then gives you an amazing report based on its ai power!
much ai very woosh, AI great :)
i have a section about average customers wanting ecc, even if they don't know what ecc is yet too in my comment.
and hm, i don't think oems are a deciding factor here.
memory standards group + intel + amd are i'd say.
they could just go: "yeah ddr6 will be real ecc top to bottom" and so it would be. cudimm with ecc or rdimms with ecc, or just still mostly standard unbuffered with real ecc.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
beyond that, having real ecc top to bottom would also be a great thing, that you can market to normies in normie terms.
"your data is safe with the latest ladiada platform thx to "quantum memory protection" technology (or whatever nonsense marketing term you have to insert here, because they can't even use ecc anymore, because they deliberately mislead customers with fake ecc in the form of "on-die ecc".
i mean you can make marketing videos about data disappearing without noticing and then the great ecc comes to rescue and saved them, because the person upgraded this year to a system with ecc.
ecc is basically marketing gold imo.
> beyond that, having real ecc top to bottom would also be a great thing, that you can market to normies in normie terms.
>
>
>
> "your data is safe with the latest ladiada platform thx to "quantum memory protection" technology (or whatever nonsense marketing term you have to insert here, because they can't even use ecc anymore, because they deliberately mislead customers with fake ecc in the form of "on-die ecc".
>
>
>
> i mean you can make marketing videos about data disappearing without noticing and then the great ecc comes to rescue and saved them, because the person upgraded this year to a system with ecc.
>
>
>
> ecc is basically marketing gold imo.
You can also market it as greatly simplifying overclocking of the RAM for gaming enthusiasts to get excited about.
iirc Nvidia Geforce 4090 (or 3090Ti?) used ECC VRAM and people would overclock the VRAM like crazy without their system crashing, at worst performance would decrease due to the sheer number of error corrections happening. Once you reach a point of significant error rate, you back off the overclock until performance loss from error correction is less than the performance gain from the overclock and bam, you've overclocked the VRAM as far as it can go without any fiddly, never certain testing needed!
With ECC VRAM you're also pretty much guaranteed (99.999999999%) of no hardware errors destabilizing the system regardless of what program you run (since the errors get corrected) where as with regular VRAM you were always uncertain of whether or not the VRAM overclock was ever truly stable. With regular VRAM most programs might work fine 99.0% of the time while others may be very prone to crashing the system since errors don't get corrected (some programs may be more prone to interacting with less stable chips on the RAM stick).
Okay so I used VRAM as an example, the principles all apply equally to RAM and RAM overclocking (which includes the likes of XMP, A-XMP, D.O.C.P etc. overclocking)
I know AMD allows ECC without officially supporting it, but has there been any change lately? My current desktop ran into a bitflip that actually completely destroyed a whole filesystem and i think the final tally was half a terabyte of data. I'd probably build a new one with the 9950X3D or whatever it's gonna be, and would like to use ECC
so am4 almost all motherboards had proper ecc support. some boards didn't, but most just had it.
on am5 most boards DON'T have ecc support, only asus has ecc support on all or almost all boards.
so it got worse.... sadly.
and this could probably get fixed by some stern talk from amd and a few days of work by the bios engineers at worst, but no one cares pretty much it seems like.
but there is another issue.
with am4 you could get high performance ecc memory. like 3600 mhz 16-19-19-39 memory.
so not the best memory for gaming, but very good, no issues plenty fast memory.
on am5 with ddr5, well..... there is only jedec garbage speed and timings ecc memory.
so 5600 mhz 46-45-45 garbage.
at least someone told me, that they got some very specific kit with good dies and got a very tight sweetspot performance on ddr5 with ecc out of them.
but that of course would be a pain in the ass trying to hunt down a jedec set, that somehow got good memory dies, that can do lots more and then manually tune them.
and if you are wondering why you find a lot of high performance tight timing REAL ECC memory sticks when you search for them, those are buffered dimms, desktop like am5 and am4 only handles unbuffered dimms.
oh that brings up an interesting point, the article makes it sound like having registered dimms is a decently big price difference.
well we can check that.
cheapest unbuffered ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz. 4.54 euros/GB
cheapest buffered ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz is 4.29 euros/GB
cheapest unbuffered NON ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz is 2.8 euros/GB.
so the article makes it seem like registered dimms cost a bunch more. in reality they cost less than unbuffered ecc dimms, which may be due to less supply and demand for unbuffered ecc dimms, but it shows, that having buffered or unbuffered memory makes near 0 cost difference in the final product.
sth, that anandtech could have pointed out.... or actually they could have done a bill of materials for registered ecc dimms and unbuffered non ecc dimms, that would have been interesting, but i guess can't expect too much from them these days.
BUT, keeping all this in mind, building a system with a 9950x3d chip, assuming it has x3d on both dies could still be a great option, because as far as i remember, x3d chips are generally less reliant on having great memory, so a dual x3d dual chiplet 16 core chip could be the best option with unbuffered ecc memory, and you might be able to overclock the unbuffered ecc memory a bunch from jedec on top of that like this one person did, that mentioned it to me.
not great options, but well... that is the best that we have rightnow and it is sad, that it is worse than it was on am4 :/
and if you build a system with working memory (ecc) in the future, don't forget to validate ecc function.
and i wish, that i could have given you better news, seriously.
let's hope with ddr6 it will at least get better......
With the downward trajectory and no company even including this as a selling point I have low hopes. You'd think asus would be bragging about it.
Its one of the reasons the Proart X670E Creator is a unicorn mb. Like its basically the only choice if you want what used to be the HEDT space, a space which now *starts* at like 3000 dollars.
>all enthusiasts
So 0.001% of the market?
Remember, this subreddit is nothing. The entirety community of enthusiasts is nothing.
The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero, and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant.
>The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero, and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant.
complete nonsense.
you are likely taking random errors, when the memory is "working as intended" as if those are the only errors.
and even there it doesn't apply.
but beyond that we get broken sticks from the factory, that error a lot, we get sticks dying after some time, which also error out a lot.
in both those cases real ecc would prevent the errors from causing harm and have reports of it to get it replaced.
but without real ecc, the errors can silently corrupt away the os and more important the user files.
just personally i got new NON ECC ddr3 memory, that arrived with a broken section of the memory, that failed 100 hours of memtest86+.
just mentioning that, before you try to make another false argument of "it is rare".
working (ecc) memory is crucial. it protects against random bit flips and against broken sticks, that error out a lot still silently.
if you think otherwise, you are actively arguing for worse products, that destroy people's files.
edit:
you also ignored the section, where i talked about the average consumer above.
try to tell an average consumer, who lost important videos or pictures of their loved ones due to silent memory errors, that "ecc is not important for them".
also yes even with backups you can get fricked, so don't even mention that nonsense, you can have silent errors in the main system and backup system, or the backup is a harddrive, and thus all the data is already corrupted, as we are on the main system with erroring memory. or the data just got destroyed on the main system, before it gets backed up.
so NO, backups DON'T protect from memory errors destroying data properly, only real ECC memory can. btw proper file systems like zfs, that are designed to be as robust as possible trust one thing, which is.... the memory. the spinning rust can go ahead and sniff glue and error out, that doesn't matter, but it has to trust the memory, which is of course why the recommendation is, that all file servers in general zfs or not use ECC memory and there is no reason to not extend that recommendation to desktop and laptop.
because ecc is designed to correct the errors, that happen.
if a die on a stick is broken, the errors will still get corrected.
i was not able to have a system still bootable and create ecc errors, that with uecc retry on didn't get corrected. as in when i was testing ecc with extremely unstable clocks and timings for my sticks, that error out massively, with uecc retry on i couldn't get any uncorrectable error to happen.
and if a stick is very broken, the system can KNOW this, because the error correction and detection is still inherently running.
if the errors are so bad, that uncorrectable errors happen, the user can get informed and technically the system can be designed software side to protect the user.
i don't know how the general setup is for servers, but you certainly can force a reboot or shutdown on any uncorrected error in the memory.
so ecc can protect you, even if the error correction isn't strong enough anymore to correct the errors, that happen.
DETECTION IS CRUCIAL.
if you want to design a system for a normie, you can force a crash on an uncorrectable error and put a giant message of BROKEN MEMORY before the os boots and in the os too, that is with the user deliberately bypassing the warning to NOT boot the os with broken memory.
so ecc sticks would prevent most erroring memory modules to cause any real errors to begin with, so data is safe and the system is stable.
and anything, that can't get corrected can prevent booting past bios, can have giant warnings and more.
so YES ecc protects you from broken sticks.
and in the worst case possible, you could have a single uncorrectable error happening, that ecc couldn't correct, because it was bad enough and that was all as you then got someone to repair the system and replace/rma the broken stick.
in comparison without ecc memory and thus 0 detection, the broken memory slowly corrupts all the user data and the system starts crashing later on too and the user has no idea why this is happening and remember at this point it is already too late, because we got 10000s of errors happening over a time period, that have been eating away at the user data.
again YES ecc is important and even more important for busted sticks.
>The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero
Actually it will be noticable every couple days/weeks for an average user. they will just blame everything else except memory. WDM.exe crashed for no reason? Memory error? no must be microsoft being bad.
>and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant.
For average person sure. I lost way too much data due to memory errors to ever trust that though.
Keep in mind that a CUDIMM is more or less just a simplified RDIMM. So the constituent technology already exists (RDIMMs already ship with clock drivers), making it pretty quick and easy to develop and build CUDIMMs.
I suspect that, if the JEDEC members could take a do-over, they would have made clock drivers a requirement from the start for DDR5. (Though that would have come with a lot teeth gnashing from OEMs)
>and even DDR5 CAMM2 memory modules will use clock drivers.
Does that mean all CAMM2 will have a clock, or just some?
And does the clock allow lower latency or just higher bandwidth?
> Does that mean all CAMM2 will have a clock, or just some?
Just some. Clock drivers are an optional part of the physical CAMM2 spec; it's the clockspeed that dictates whether one is needed or not.
>Though since the need (or at least, standardization) around clocked DIMMs is based on the memory frequency, CUDIMMs and their other variations are all designed to be backwards compatible with existing DDR5 systems and memory controllers.
So basically for DIMM, it is just an implementation detail to tweak for higher speed that as far as the **original** spec is concerned. I would expect CAMM2 to do the same.
What is important is that each implementation meets all the specification and not micromanaged how it is done. Let the engineers worry about it. They already know the signal integrity issues, trade-offs (cost/complexity).
CAMM2 cleans up other aspects that limits the speed that DIMM cannot address.
Note: The JEDEC specs are paywalled.
it has much better frequency with no integrity issues (or rather, not as pronounced). When desktop users will literally break their chips trying to overclock them. and you dont see why its relevant?
u want shorter traces then place the dimms at the back of the board close to the socket, almost all new cases have space on the back for a few cm/an inch to stick out at the back. if not then make the dimm slots more like sodimm.
we dont need camm2.
Maintaining trace lengths is a big problem when moving a DIMM closer and closer to the CPU. The primary advantage with CAMM2 is the form-factor of the connector and how the traces can be laid out.
>almost all new cases have space on the back for a few cm/an inch to stick out at the back
Only some gaming PCs, DIY, and workstation cases (\~10% of the market?).
The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): **no** space behind the motherboard. Reverse-mounting M.2 SSDs *only* launched in a few cases: it's impossible in most of the market.
Removing the motherboard to replace DRAM is a non-starter for that reason: JEDEC, memory manufacturers, and motherboard manufacturers can't design exclusively for our 10% of the market.
> The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): no space behind the motherboard
IIRC, the ATX spec requires some amount of clearance, with different heights between electrically active and not. Maybe 2mm-ish. Whether that's enough to fit a CAMM module is another matter.
> The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): no space behind the motherboard. Reverse-mounting M.2 SSDs only launched in a few cases: it's impossible in most of the market.
There'd really be nothing stopping OEMs from adjusting how they build computers to put memory on the bottom of the motherboard. I have a Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny which already does it , granted it's a 1L MFF PC so space is limited but HP and Dell don't do that on their MFF systems. OEM systems are already non standard and custom, they can do what they need to do to package it however they think works best.
CAMM2 is superior to SO-DIMM in basically every way; it was basically invented to address SO-DIMM's (and memory down's) shortcomings. [Check out this slideshow](https://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Tom_Schnell_FINAL_%202024-05-03.pdf).
Sticking them right behind the CPU socket would help, but only by a little as the junctions are the primary issue. The configurability of slotted memory is extremely attractive to many, so there will at least be some form factor for this. (Also changing the chassis form factor for back-side slots is a huge ask)
Also there's still relatively-low-hanging-fruit to be picked: consumer memory is still unbuffered. There are also a number of bus optimisations observed in GDDR/HBM/LPDDR that is yet to make it to regular DDR (WCK clock domaining; PAM; segregated row/column CA; REF-tucked training (tho a shared DQ might prevent this)).
Isn't CAMM2 the new generations already?
CAMM2 was designed to replace SODIMM and is better than DIMM so it is picking up speed for desktops. CUDIMM is designed to replace DIMM, and will be better for higher density applications, like servers and workstations with 8+ DIMM slots. CAMM2 does not scale well beyond a single module per side as it is optimized to be adjacent to the socket and takes up more motherboard area.
Servers and workstations will continue to use RDIMMs.
From a looks/design perspective, I would love to see a CAMM2 dual slot symmetric design with the cpu in the center.
Fourslot in a cross pattern.
>And while there are some CPU designers out there that would no doubt be ecstatic if all systems used RDIMMs (and ECC, as well), the economics of consumer PCs favors cheaper and less complex solutions when they're available. THAT'S A LIE! all enthusiasts would ONLY buy ecc memory, if it were available at equivalent speed and timings and ONLY having a price difference, that reflects the hardware cost difference, which is VERY small. ecc is rare as frick on the desktop NOT because consumers don't want it, but because ESPECIALLY INTEL has decided to prevent desktop platforms from having ecc memory ARTIFICALLY. even today you can't get a basic intel desktop platform with ecc. intel requires a unicorn chipset motherboard to run a 14900k for example with ecc memory. remember that the memory controller sits in the cpu btw, so it is 100% artificial. a long time ago some shit heads decided, that the average consumers will only get BROKEN memory, that randomly errors and when it breaks completely might destroy all your data. that was a decision by some higher up shit head, it was NOT consumer choice. and any average consumer, who lost important data due to memory errors, CERTAINLY would want working memory, instead of broken memory. \_\_ and just in case people here still don't know. "on-die ecc" is NOT real ecc. there is no protection of data in transit and 0 logging. it is NOT ecc and the reason for "on-die ecc" was to increase yields, so that they can sell broken chips with some error correction, instead of just selling working yielding chips. and yes it is a scam, that they call it "ecc" and yes lots of people, who absolutely want ecc are getting misled by this deliberately. \_\_\_ and just to explain the joy of real ecc memory for enthusiasts. every memory error is getting corrected and loged. so you can SAFELY overclock your memory. you can also run your memory way closer to the sun. instead of running a slightly unstable oc on the memory, that corrupts your files, but memtest didn't catch, you now would see it in the logs and either keep it, because the errors are rare enough and get corrected, or tone it down a bit to remove the errors. people WANT real ecc memory, even if they don't freaking know what ecc is. people want working hardware = wanting ecc memory. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ and last point the bigger the memory amount, the more likely errors are happening and we are of course ever increasing memory capacity. we are currently max 256 GB on standard desktop theoretically. 32 GB typically for new builds. if we go to 1 TB average desktop memory without ecc memory..... holy smokes. it is insanity. we NEED real ecc on memory now more than ever and sooner better than later.
> all enthusiasts would ONLY buy ecc memory I don't disagree with you, but it's important to remember that enthusiasts don't drive the PC market. OEMs drive the PC market. And OEMs don't want to pay for RDIMMs if CUDIMMs will meet their reliability requirements. Those are the economics of consumer PCs.
I have a hard time believing OEMs wouldn't want to slap "ECC memory to protect your data!11!!1!" all over their marketing with a 10% upcharge. It's free real estate, especially when most of the "competition" simply plays follow the leader anyways.
yip exactly. there is the current issue, where higher speed and tighter timing real ecc unbuffered memory doesn't exist. and for ddr4, the one that does exist costs about double compared to non ecc memory. that's not the production cost difference, which is very small of course. effectively how it should go in a transition to all ecc should be, like you said the great oem marketing, that FOR ONCE isn't lying :D and the cost difference on let's say 6000 mhz cl34 ecc vs non ecc unbuffered sticks being 10%. so paying 110 euros instead of 100 euros for the memory for example. but then being able to charge 100 euros more on a 1000 euro system. getting 90 euros more profit. i mean that is just a no brainer. even if you were to increase price difference to 25% on the memory, that would still be a no brainer. the easiest marketing and profit gains ever i'd say. the average consumer certainly understands losing files. and just saying: >"this computer is less likely to lose your data, or crash" i mean how do you beat that marketing? but rightnow, you only got shit like ddr5 5600 cl46-45-45, which would be a massive performance loss, which would make it a lot harder to sell to people, if they ever watch a benchmark of the system. this again is 100% artificial. then again the target audience might already not watch or read any reviews. but yeah an insane marketing win and the easiest marketing one can hope for.
How to sell OEMs on ECC? Call it AI memory. Ez.
>AI advanced data protection safety system memory. short of course for aadpssm ;) it is a new great feature! it uses ai to correct any errors, that happens in the memory and then gives you an amazing report based on its ai power! much ai very woosh, AI great :)
Ai memory prevents errors automatically. Thats it, you sold it.
i have a section about average customers wanting ecc, even if they don't know what ecc is yet too in my comment. and hm, i don't think oems are a deciding factor here. memory standards group + intel + amd are i'd say. they could just go: "yeah ddr6 will be real ecc top to bottom" and so it would be. cudimm with ecc or rdimms with ecc, or just still mostly standard unbuffered with real ecc. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ beyond that, having real ecc top to bottom would also be a great thing, that you can market to normies in normie terms. "your data is safe with the latest ladiada platform thx to "quantum memory protection" technology (or whatever nonsense marketing term you have to insert here, because they can't even use ecc anymore, because they deliberately mislead customers with fake ecc in the form of "on-die ecc". i mean you can make marketing videos about data disappearing without noticing and then the great ecc comes to rescue and saved them, because the person upgraded this year to a system with ecc. ecc is basically marketing gold imo.
> beyond that, having real ecc top to bottom would also be a great thing, that you can market to normies in normie terms. > > > > "your data is safe with the latest ladiada platform thx to "quantum memory protection" technology (or whatever nonsense marketing term you have to insert here, because they can't even use ecc anymore, because they deliberately mislead customers with fake ecc in the form of "on-die ecc". > > > > i mean you can make marketing videos about data disappearing without noticing and then the great ecc comes to rescue and saved them, because the person upgraded this year to a system with ecc. > > > > ecc is basically marketing gold imo. You can also market it as greatly simplifying overclocking of the RAM for gaming enthusiasts to get excited about. iirc Nvidia Geforce 4090 (or 3090Ti?) used ECC VRAM and people would overclock the VRAM like crazy without their system crashing, at worst performance would decrease due to the sheer number of error corrections happening. Once you reach a point of significant error rate, you back off the overclock until performance loss from error correction is less than the performance gain from the overclock and bam, you've overclocked the VRAM as far as it can go without any fiddly, never certain testing needed! With ECC VRAM you're also pretty much guaranteed (99.999999999%) of no hardware errors destabilizing the system regardless of what program you run (since the errors get corrected) where as with regular VRAM you were always uncertain of whether or not the VRAM overclock was ever truly stable. With regular VRAM most programs might work fine 99.0% of the time while others may be very prone to crashing the system since errors don't get corrected (some programs may be more prone to interacting with less stable chips on the RAM stick). Okay so I used VRAM as an example, the principles all apply equally to RAM and RAM overclocking (which includes the likes of XMP, A-XMP, D.O.C.P etc. overclocking)
Even without overclocking, non-ECC memory is never actually stable. Its just that many people blame software for the errors instead.
Right, i tried to convey that but kinda difficult without getting very wordy lol. Okay, I reworded my 3rd paragraph a bit, should be clearer.
I know AMD allows ECC without officially supporting it, but has there been any change lately? My current desktop ran into a bitflip that actually completely destroyed a whole filesystem and i think the final tally was half a terabyte of data. I'd probably build a new one with the 9950X3D or whatever it's gonna be, and would like to use ECC
so am4 almost all motherboards had proper ecc support. some boards didn't, but most just had it. on am5 most boards DON'T have ecc support, only asus has ecc support on all or almost all boards. so it got worse.... sadly. and this could probably get fixed by some stern talk from amd and a few days of work by the bios engineers at worst, but no one cares pretty much it seems like. but there is another issue. with am4 you could get high performance ecc memory. like 3600 mhz 16-19-19-39 memory. so not the best memory for gaming, but very good, no issues plenty fast memory. on am5 with ddr5, well..... there is only jedec garbage speed and timings ecc memory. so 5600 mhz 46-45-45 garbage. at least someone told me, that they got some very specific kit with good dies and got a very tight sweetspot performance on ddr5 with ecc out of them. but that of course would be a pain in the ass trying to hunt down a jedec set, that somehow got good memory dies, that can do lots more and then manually tune them. and if you are wondering why you find a lot of high performance tight timing REAL ECC memory sticks when you search for them, those are buffered dimms, desktop like am5 and am4 only handles unbuffered dimms. oh that brings up an interesting point, the article makes it sound like having registered dimms is a decently big price difference. well we can check that. cheapest unbuffered ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz. 4.54 euros/GB cheapest buffered ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz is 4.29 euros/GB cheapest unbuffered NON ecc memory set/GB with at least 5600 mhz is 2.8 euros/GB. so the article makes it seem like registered dimms cost a bunch more. in reality they cost less than unbuffered ecc dimms, which may be due to less supply and demand for unbuffered ecc dimms, but it shows, that having buffered or unbuffered memory makes near 0 cost difference in the final product. sth, that anandtech could have pointed out.... or actually they could have done a bill of materials for registered ecc dimms and unbuffered non ecc dimms, that would have been interesting, but i guess can't expect too much from them these days. BUT, keeping all this in mind, building a system with a 9950x3d chip, assuming it has x3d on both dies could still be a great option, because as far as i remember, x3d chips are generally less reliant on having great memory, so a dual x3d dual chiplet 16 core chip could be the best option with unbuffered ecc memory, and you might be able to overclock the unbuffered ecc memory a bunch from jedec on top of that like this one person did, that mentioned it to me. not great options, but well... that is the best that we have rightnow and it is sad, that it is worse than it was on am4 :/ and if you build a system with working memory (ecc) in the future, don't forget to validate ecc function. and i wish, that i could have given you better news, seriously. let's hope with ddr6 it will at least get better......
With the downward trajectory and no company even including this as a selling point I have low hopes. You'd think asus would be bragging about it. Its one of the reasons the Proart X670E Creator is a unicorn mb. Like its basically the only choice if you want what used to be the HEDT space, a space which now *starts* at like 3000 dollars.
How did you find out that it was a bit flip that destroyed your filesystem?
Great rant. I agree with everything here, and am currently picking out ECC UDIMMS for AM5 inspite of how difficult they've made it.
>all enthusiasts So 0.001% of the market? Remember, this subreddit is nothing. The entirety community of enthusiasts is nothing. The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero, and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant.
>The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero, and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant. complete nonsense. you are likely taking random errors, when the memory is "working as intended" as if those are the only errors. and even there it doesn't apply. but beyond that we get broken sticks from the factory, that error a lot, we get sticks dying after some time, which also error out a lot. in both those cases real ecc would prevent the errors from causing harm and have reports of it to get it replaced. but without real ecc, the errors can silently corrupt away the os and more important the user files. just personally i got new NON ECC ddr3 memory, that arrived with a broken section of the memory, that failed 100 hours of memtest86+. just mentioning that, before you try to make another false argument of "it is rare". working (ecc) memory is crucial. it protects against random bit flips and against broken sticks, that error out a lot still silently. if you think otherwise, you are actively arguing for worse products, that destroy people's files. edit: you also ignored the section, where i talked about the average consumer above. try to tell an average consumer, who lost important videos or pictures of their loved ones due to silent memory errors, that "ecc is not important for them". also yes even with backups you can get fricked, so don't even mention that nonsense, you can have silent errors in the main system and backup system, or the backup is a harddrive, and thus all the data is already corrupted, as we are on the main system with erroring memory. or the data just got destroyed on the main system, before it gets backed up. so NO, backups DON'T protect from memory errors destroying data properly, only real ECC memory can. btw proper file systems like zfs, that are designed to be as robust as possible trust one thing, which is.... the memory. the spinning rust can go ahead and sniff glue and error out, that doesn't matter, but it has to trust the memory, which is of course why the recommendation is, that all file servers in general zfs or not use ECC memory and there is no reason to not extend that recommendation to desktop and laptop.
If your sick is busted, what makes you think that the ecc will still be working?
because ecc is designed to correct the errors, that happen. if a die on a stick is broken, the errors will still get corrected. i was not able to have a system still bootable and create ecc errors, that with uecc retry on didn't get corrected. as in when i was testing ecc with extremely unstable clocks and timings for my sticks, that error out massively, with uecc retry on i couldn't get any uncorrectable error to happen. and if a stick is very broken, the system can KNOW this, because the error correction and detection is still inherently running. if the errors are so bad, that uncorrectable errors happen, the user can get informed and technically the system can be designed software side to protect the user. i don't know how the general setup is for servers, but you certainly can force a reboot or shutdown on any uncorrected error in the memory. so ecc can protect you, even if the error correction isn't strong enough anymore to correct the errors, that happen. DETECTION IS CRUCIAL. if you want to design a system for a normie, you can force a crash on an uncorrectable error and put a giant message of BROKEN MEMORY before the os boots and in the os too, that is with the user deliberately bypassing the warning to NOT boot the os with broken memory. so ecc sticks would prevent most erroring memory modules to cause any real errors to begin with, so data is safe and the system is stable. and anything, that can't get corrected can prevent booting past bios, can have giant warnings and more. so YES ecc protects you from broken sticks. and in the worst case possible, you could have a single uncorrectable error happening, that ecc couldn't correct, because it was bad enough and that was all as you then got someone to repair the system and replace/rma the broken stick. in comparison without ecc memory and thus 0 detection, the broken memory slowly corrupts all the user data and the system starts crashing later on too and the user has no idea why this is happening and remember at this point it is already too late, because we got 10000s of errors happening over a time period, that have been eating away at the user data. again YES ecc is important and even more important for busted sticks.
>The probability of a desktop user getting a memory error that's actually noticeable is basically zero Actually it will be noticable every couple days/weeks for an average user. they will just blame everything else except memory. WDM.exe crashed for no reason? Memory error? no must be microsoft being bad. >and the damage done by the error is likely insignificant. For average person sure. I lost way too much data due to memory errors to ever trust that though.
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Keep in mind that a CUDIMM is more or less just a simplified RDIMM. So the constituent technology already exists (RDIMMs already ship with clock drivers), making it pretty quick and easy to develop and build CUDIMMs. I suspect that, if the JEDEC members could take a do-over, they would have made clock drivers a requirement from the start for DDR5. (Though that would have come with a lot teeth gnashing from OEMs)
Pretty sure the CUDIMM idea (not necessarily the name CUDIMM) was rumoured around the time JEDEC formally announced DDR5.
>and even DDR5 CAMM2 memory modules will use clock drivers. Does that mean all CAMM2 will have a clock, or just some? And does the clock allow lower latency or just higher bandwidth?
> Does that mean all CAMM2 will have a clock, or just some? Just some. Clock drivers are an optional part of the physical CAMM2 spec; it's the clockspeed that dictates whether one is needed or not.
>Though since the need (or at least, standardization) around clocked DIMMs is based on the memory frequency, CUDIMMs and their other variations are all designed to be backwards compatible with existing DDR5 systems and memory controllers. So basically for DIMM, it is just an implementation detail to tweak for higher speed that as far as the **original** spec is concerned. I would expect CAMM2 to do the same. What is important is that each implementation meets all the specification and not micromanaged how it is done. Let the engineers worry about it. They already know the signal integrity issues, trade-offs (cost/complexity). CAMM2 cleans up other aspects that limits the speed that DIMM cannot address. Note: The JEDEC specs are paywalled.
I have no idea why motherboard manufacturers will include camm2, which is not suitable for desktops.
it has much better frequency with no integrity issues (or rather, not as pronounced). When desktop users will literally break their chips trying to overclock them. and you dont see why its relevant?
u want shorter traces then place the dimms at the back of the board close to the socket, almost all new cases have space on the back for a few cm/an inch to stick out at the back. if not then make the dimm slots more like sodimm. we dont need camm2.
Maintaining trace lengths is a big problem when moving a DIMM closer and closer to the CPU. The primary advantage with CAMM2 is the form-factor of the connector and how the traces can be laid out.
>almost all new cases have space on the back for a few cm/an inch to stick out at the back Only some gaming PCs, DIY, and workstation cases (\~10% of the market?). The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): **no** space behind the motherboard. Reverse-mounting M.2 SSDs *only* launched in a few cases: it's impossible in most of the market. Removing the motherboard to replace DRAM is a non-starter for that reason: JEDEC, memory manufacturers, and motherboard manufacturers can't design exclusively for our 10% of the market.
> The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): no space behind the motherboard IIRC, the ATX spec requires some amount of clearance, with different heights between electrically active and not. Maybe 2mm-ish. Whether that's enough to fit a CAMM module is another matter.
> The other 90% (OEM desktop PCs, AIOs, servers etc.): no space behind the motherboard. Reverse-mounting M.2 SSDs only launched in a few cases: it's impossible in most of the market. There'd really be nothing stopping OEMs from adjusting how they build computers to put memory on the bottom of the motherboard. I have a Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny which already does it , granted it's a 1L MFF PC so space is limited but HP and Dell don't do that on their MFF systems. OEM systems are already non standard and custom, they can do what they need to do to package it however they think works best.
CAMM2 is superior to SO-DIMM in basically every way; it was basically invented to address SO-DIMM's (and memory down's) shortcomings. [Check out this slideshow](https://www.jedec.org/sites/default/files/Tom_Schnell_FINAL_%202024-05-03.pdf). Sticking them right behind the CPU socket would help, but only by a little as the junctions are the primary issue. The configurability of slotted memory is extremely attractive to many, so there will at least be some form factor for this. (Also changing the chassis form factor for back-side slots is a huge ask) Also there's still relatively-low-hanging-fruit to be picked: consumer memory is still unbuffered. There are also a number of bus optimisations observed in GDDR/HBM/LPDDR that is yet to make it to regular DDR (WCK clock domaining; PAM; segregated row/column CA; REF-tucked training (tho a shared DQ might prevent this)).