I always thought the chips on the RAM stick would do one-bit error correction transparently and just fail to correct two-bit errors. But, it appears that the motherboard has to support it and you might need to enable it. There's an overview at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory#Pros_and_cons_of_ECC
Thank you for the question, I think I learned something today. I hope someone who knows better comes along, I'd be interested in knowing more.
Pretty hard.
ECC ram will work as normal RAM on non-ECC cpus.
To use ECC you need a Xeon (or amd equivalent)
processor and supporting motherboard.
You can get the Xeon equivalent of the latest i7 cheaper than the i7, you (i think) still need to get a server mobo though.
It's a bit of a pain to find ECC mobos for desktops.
I looked for some when I built my last workstation seen that I was putting 16 GB in but ended up using stupid normal RAM : (
Now between SSH, SCP, SSL / TLS, Git, diffs before commits, unit tests, etc. I'd be really unlikely to have a bit flip really "destroying my work" : )
So, yeah, 16 GB of non-ECC memory on a Linux workstation which regularly reaches 6 months of uptime: no need to enter in a paranoia either for a desktop/workstation.
AMD AM2/AM3 CPUs support ECC. It will work provided that the motherboard has the extra wiring required and BIOS support is enabled.
Some vendors (notably ASUS) advertise ECC support on many cheap AMD motherboards.
AFAIK to get ECC with Intel you have to pay for the Xeon.
