the thing about ECC memory is that it doesn't support reporting of ECC errors, so it ends up just hiding the fact that your RAM has started to go bad. this is good if you replace RAM every n years, but not if you intend to use the RAM until it starts degrading.
>the thing about ECC memory is that it doesn't support reporting of ECC errors
Wait that. It does, and that's the point. Although the CPU and motherboard do of course also have to support it, but with AMD it is possible. I do it on a 9800x3d.
One bit errors are always both detected and corrected. Multibit errors are mostly at least detected.
as i understand it: that's in-band ECC and if you CPU/mobo support it, you can enable IBECC even on non-ECC RAM. IBECC has overhead, though. ECC RAM has on-die error correction, with corrections taking place before the motherboard ever sees it (and without the performance overhead of IBECC).