Can you use ecc ram on a non-ecc motherboard, such as ga-m68m-s2p

Hello, I had a GA-MA770DS3 motherboard which will not power on. I
wanted to buy a replacement but AM2+ boards are hard to find. The only
gigabyte model I can find is the GA-M68M-S2P. However I was using ECC
memory in my original motherboard. Does the m68m-s2p support ecc, I do
not think it does. I was using Kingston kvr800d2e5/1g. I don't think
the m68m supports ecc. Could I fit the ram and use it without the ecc
function or would it not work at all?

 

GA-MA770-DS3 (rev. 2.0)
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2874#ov

4 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory
Support for DDR2 1066
Support ECC memory [Use of a CPU that supports ECC is required]

GA-M68M-S2P (rev. 2.3)
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3498#sp

2 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 8GB of system memory
Support for DDR2 1066

So you're only getting two slots on that one.

The modules should fit, as I don't think UDIMM versus UDIMM ECC makes
any difference to slot keying. The BIOS could choose to ignore the
ECC, and if for some reason the extra eight bits weren't wired up,
it shouldn't hurt anything.

As far as I know, the only real saving for removing ECC from a design,
is if the ECC signals are hard to route, away from the memory controller.
Years ago, Intel made a chipset, where the motherboard layout required
going to a 6 layer PCB to achieve the connection of the ECC signals.
As a result, many products were built on 4 layers, and the ECC was
disconnected. But I've never heard of that issue since, so I assume
the breakout is easy enough to do, with a 4 layer board now.

The other issue is BIOS support. The only potential downside, would be
a BIOS that notices ECC in the module serial presence data, and does the
wrong thing (i.e. refuse to POST, issue "memory error" beep).

I couldn't find any forum-type reports of mixing ECC with the GA-M68M-S2P.

It might work, or not work, as a function of the BIOS.

DDR3 memory is relatively cheap (and is due to go up in price again),
and getting a DDR3 motherboard + RAM would be another alternative. Whether
that will work, depends on your processor.

Gigabyte has a CPU support list, where you can search by processor and
look for resulting motherboards.

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support.aspx

Paul

 

Hello again,

Thanks for your help on my other thread.

Unfortunately am2 boards are hard to find. The m68m is not as well
specified as the 770ds3, I agree, but I cannot find a 770ds3 for sale.
The m68m was the only gigabyte am2 board for sale that I could find
brand new. I did look for second hand 770ds3 on ebay(co.uk) but no-one
was selling any. I would like to stick with gigabyte boards if
possible but I don't know that am2 boards are available from any other
manufacturer either.

Thanks,
Stephen.

 

Yeah, the selection of the old motherboards, is looking pretty thin
right now. I guess everything for AMD, would be moving to FM1, so
there's no reason to make the old boards.

This is what Newegg shows, in terms of socket versus products available.

CPU Socket Type
AM2+/AM2 (1)
AM2+/AM3 (2)
AM3 (55)
AM3+ (58)
AM3/AM2+/AM2 (7) <--- One Asrock board, with mixed DIMM slots
FM1 (56)

The other Asrock board, has two DDR2 slots. ASRock A785GM-LE

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157274

Not a lot of good choices.

Paul

 

I've not heard of asrock before. Who are they? Are their boards any
good?

 

They are the "low cost" offshoot of Asus. (They mention Pegatron in
the article, and Pegatron is also an Asus operation.) So it's still Asus,
but at "arms length" and in separate facilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asrock

I only have one of their boards here, and the BIOS code was left
unfinished in a couple areas (I suspected "lawyer trouble" as
the root cause, rather than carelessness. I think Intel threatened
them. SpeedStep code was turned off. A hacker in Germany figured
out how to turn it back on. I ended up running a modified BIOS
in the motherboard.)

As long as the customer reviews for the Asrock board don't indicate
problems of that sort, a bad BIOS, I think the board is a safe
purchase. My Asrock board, at $65, still runs. I was half expecting
a $65 motherboard to just blow up after a year, but it hasn't.

Asrock tries to do "non-mainstream" things. Like that example motherboard
I showed you, with two DDR2 slots and two DDR3 slots. You can't install
four DIMMs at the same time, with that setup. Only two at a time. Either
use two DDR2 sticks, or two DDR3 sticks, and the stick type supported
would be a function of the processor used. Some AMD processors support
both DDR2 and DDR3, in which case, you can use either.

My Asrock motherboard, has both an AGP video slot and a PCI express
video slot (and both could be used at the same time). Not many motherboards
are built like that! I suspect they made those motherboards, until they
ran out of chipsets to use. Asrock also made some motherboards, where
the processor was on a replaceable vertical module, so you could
do an upgrade without throwing away the base board. Adding novelties
is how they try to establish their own "niche" personality. If they
did "bog standard" boards like their parent Asus, you wouldn't have
been able to tell the two companies apart. (Asus also makes low-cost
boards, typically microATX for business PC applications.)

Paul

 

In the last episode of <>,

They're an ASUS spinoff going back to 2002 or so. I'd consider them to
be on the upper end of the cheap stuff, although they've definitely put
out some good hardware (and a bit of junk here and there)

 

Hello,

Just to let you know I put the ECC RAM into the new, non-ECC
motherboard and like you predicted, it works fine. It is 800 and board
supports up to 1066, so I wonder whether I would see a difference
upgrading to that speed?

Thanks,
Stephen.

 

I bought the Gigabyte board, only because I had not read your post at
the time and I have always used Gigabyte boards in the past, which is
perhaps a bit silly: just because something was good ten years ago
doesn't necessarily mean it is still the best today. For the same
reasons I still stick with AMD processors.

The features you describe sound very good, being able to use
difference types of RAM, video card, processors, etc suggest a very
future-proof board. I only wish I had read your post before I rushed
to buy!

Thanks,
Stephen.

 

AMD processors are a little more dependent on RAM speed than
some of the Intel ones. But not to the point for me at least,
that I'd be buying more RAM.

To give you some idea, my Asrock board runs DDR2-533,
and the machine I'm typing on is DDR2-800. So I didn't
exactly splash out on the RAM

The problem now, is finding some worthy RAM for an upgrade.
When RAM goes out of style, the enthusiast grades are the first to go.
And one DDR2-1066 product I was just looking at, got bad
reviews, because it didn't appear to be up to spec.

As far as I can remember, something like DDR2-800 might have
been the top Jedec speed. To make higher speeds or reduce the
latency, they generally boost the RAM voltage. The Kingston
tables show the trend. Nominal DDR2 is 1.8V, with the fastest
grade tested here at 2.3 or 2.35V. If you expect the RAM to
operate at the stated speed, you have to apply that voltage.
So the RAM will be running a little warmer.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070104041253/http://www.kingston.com/HyperX/products/khx_ddr2.asp

And sometimes you get a little surprise. I remember when I
got my new motherboard, I put some Kingston DDR2-800 in
it, and carefully adjusted it so that (I thought) it would
be running at DDR2-800. Later, when I was checking, I discovered
by using CPU-Z, it was running DDR2-1066 and the computer hadn't crashed.
(The speed thing, is a BIOS bug.) And that was without boosted
voltage or anything (because at the time, I wasn't interested in
overclocking the RAM). Some of the DDR2 out there has headroom,
but the best way to spot that, is to read the reviews on Newegg
and see how things are going, today. The thing is, sometimes
a really great brand of RAM chips goes out of production, and
then there's nothing left but less overclockable chips.
The customer review are the best way to spot a trend.

Overclocking RAM is a little tricky, because the BIOS may not
adjust tRAS, tCAS, tRCD, that sort of thing. You're expected to
"scale" the numbers yourself, if you adjust the BIOS so that
some hardware is overclocked. RAM overclocking can be a side
effect of changing a CPU setting, or it can be a purposeful change
in the RAM page of the BIOS (on AMD, effectively changing the
clock divider). To make an overclocking experiment meaningful,
you need to find a web article on it, to get a better handle on
how many "knobs" to turn Clock, up. Voltage, up. Timing parameters,
scale up. And so on. Then, a little memtest86+, followed by perhaps
a Linux LiveCD and some Prime95 testing. If your RAM is unstable,
the last thing you want to do, is boot into Windows, because the
registry can get corrupted. Only boot to Windows, when all your
other testing shows your adjustments are perfectly stable
and error free. You can't hurt a Linux LiveCD, with RAM errors.
It's a CD (read-only).

Paul