[inversionOf]

ECC memory has a small performance overhead, and is slightly more expensive (e.g. 12%).

It is segmentation for sure -- the chipsets and processors can easily support it -- and many of the people throughout this thread really should only be looking at Xeons. If 64GB of RAM and non-ECC memory is really such a problem, which it is for a vanishingly small percentage of users, go with a workstation chip at a small premium and have it all.

It's notable that effectively no mobile devices use ECC memory. Tablets don't. The vast majority of desktops don't. If you believed the rhetoric, these should all be crashing and destroying lives regularly. It turns out that ECC comes into play very, very infrequently. I would never buy a server that didn't have ECC, but on my desktop it just really doesn't matter that much.

[wtallis]

What's the performance overhead of ECC come from? I know registered memory has a small but measurable latency penalty, and ECC modules are often also registered, but a simple parity check in the memory controller should be a pretty fast circuit.

[gspetr]

These days ECC testing is supposed to be integrated into the CPUs.

Enthusiast testing seems to support this with overhead being <0.5% even for Reg ECC:

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/ECC-and-REG-ECC-M...