When talking DDR3 Memory what is meant by unbuffered & non ECC

[mikmak17]

When talking DDR3 Memory what is meant by unbuffered & non ECC

 

[jaquith]

There are (3) types of RAM: unbuffered non-ECC, unbuffered-ECC {UDIMM}, and registered ECC {RDIMM}. ECC 'Error-Correcting Code memory' is memory with parity checking used to correct the errors.

ECC -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
Registered -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_memory

Most consumer MOBO's use non-ECC and that RAM has no hardware registry between RAM and the IMC and most importantly it's significantly cheaper.

non-ECC -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbuffered_memory

Your CPU must support ECC to use any ECC RAM, if running Intel based systems then Xeon is required and AMD most of their consumer CPUs support both types of UDIMM, but as I understand it only the Opteron supports RDIMM.

 

[MrSMG]

What he said ^

Also, I almost certain ECC is commonly used in servers as apposed to home desktops.