ECC, altitude & memory size question (somewhat practical, mostly theoretical)

[Nowhere]

I've stumbled into a talk about how ECC memory is helpful, especially when going higher in altitude and/or increasing RAM size (especially since apparently modern operating systems use usually all memory available for caching/etc.)

And while I'm planning to upgrade size of memory...I don't think it doesn't concern me much yet (from 768 -> 1280, DDR400 @ 266; living at 100m above sea level; computer is running 24/7...but not any crittical tasks of course)

But I wonder...at which point it will be really good idea to buy only ECC? I suppose we aren't that far off with memory sizes increasing quite fast lately... (too bad distributors here don't help much when it comes to price...cheapest stuff is usually not that much expensive that in old EU/US, but the more pricey part is, the greater disproportions)

[Dr Mordrid]

IMO:

1. servers

2. very fast systems, like Core2, fast X2's and the upcoming AMD 4-cores.

3. > radiation environments (natural, man-made or high altitude)

Downside: if it's also registered ECC up to 20% longer media encodes as the registers hold the data, resulting in latency. Non-ECC registered memory likewise.