[rdl]

I want to upgrade my desktop/gaming box from a 5yo but maxed out Gulftown i7-970, but this really isn't terribly compelling. I guess I wait another generation (throw a new GPU in there, but nothing else)?

Dual CPU Xeon seems better (mmm, ECC), although faster RAM is nice, and I'm not sure what a "good" workstation board is. Is there a market for ~silent/water cooled 2P Xeon workstations still? No need to overclock, but something quiet is nice -- big diameter fans at minimum.

[Osiris]

AMD's mainstream processors support ECC and have for several years. I wouldn't be surprised in the new mainstream Zen CPUs also have ECC support.

[ksk]

Why would you want ECC for a gaming box?

[chao-]

Ah, the old Law of ECC. Say it once and everyone assumes you not only do you not need it, but you don't know how much you don't need it!

I have one machine with ECC, because it runs a backup server for all of my devices (Bacula, for anyone curious). I wouldn't mind it on all my desktop, though, and will probably have it in the next build. I remember asking around about the miniITX motherboard for the backup machine, just to double-check that worked with ECC before buying, and I couldn't get a simple yes/no answer out of anyone. Just a lot of words about how much I definitely didn't need ECC.

[koolba]

Why wouldn't you want ECC for everything?

[ksk]

Well ECC is not the be-all end-all. There are several sources of bit errors. SD-Cards, USB Flash drives, TCP/IP Packets, HDDs, SSDs etc etc. Thats just the 'bits' you have control over. If you're copying data from somewhere else, you have no control over what the other person does to it, etc etc. I wont't produce a thesis here, but you get the idea :)

[sliken]

Right, ECC is improving one piece. ZFS adds file checksums. SATA uses ECC for transfers. Considering the cost I think ECC is worth it.

The xeon E3-1230 is cheaper than the i7-6700K and while it has a slightly slower clock I don't think it's noticeable.

[ksk]

Hmm, do you happen to know what the actual improvement is, in terms of a reduction in the probability of bit errors? What I'm thinking is.. assuming there are multiple weak links in the chain, strengthening one link, might not really make all that big of a difference. But I agree with the general point you're making - something is better than nothing.

[da_chicken]

There is about a 1-2% performance overhead for ECC. Not that that many tasks are bound to memory I/O.

[rdl]

It also tends to only be available in "older" types of memory, with higher latency and lower bandwidth, on top of the ECC overhead itself.

[rdl]

For gaming, not necessary. OTOH, if I'm going to put a 1080 GTX, 2 Xeons or $1700 single-proc, 32-64-128GB RAM, lots of SSD, etc. into a box, I sort of want to make it dual-use.

Option B is just getting two boxes and multiple inputs on monitor/kvm/etc.