# To ECC or Not To ECC

**URL:** <https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/3771>\
**Category:** blog\
**Created:** [November 19, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/3771 "2015-11-19T23:45:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 34

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**Author:** ![dakull](https://discourse-cdn.codinghorror.com/user_avatar/discourse.codinghorror.com/dakull/32/73815_2.png) [@dakull](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/u/dakull)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 10:54pm UTC](https://discourse.codinghorror.com/t/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/3771/34 "2015-11-24T22:54:51Z")

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Ok, so I wanted to check if the tests were IO bound:

- pcie ssd: Finished in 6 minutes 18 seconds
- _fast_ microSD drive: Finished in 7 minutes 52 seconds

Clearly IO is not a real issue since the microSD card is orders of magnitude slower than the pcie SSD which would translate in reality to a delta of seconds between let’s say the 830/840 and the 850.

Still 1.8x is huge compared to the IPC improvements and the extra frequency boost. If it’s only the CPU I wonder what exactly makes it that fast.

It’s clearly not the ECC ram that slows down the Xeon E3-1280 V2 since it scores the same as the 3770K:

![](https://discourse-cdn.codinghorror.com/uploads/default/original/3X/a/3/a3c3420beaeb63e1d5331d029218961929554da4.png)

Maybe the answer is in these synthetic benchmarks:

> **[The Intel Core i7-6700K Review - Skylake First for Enthusiasts - PC Perspective](https://pcper.com/2015/08/the-intel-core-i7-6700k-review-skylake-first-for-enthusiasts/)**
>
> The Intel Core i7-6700K Review - Skylake First for Enthusiasts Our Intel Skylake launch coverage is intense! Make sure you hit up all the stories and videos

Where cache and memory, arithmetic et al are from 1.9x to 2.1x faster compared to 3770 (and the E3-1280 V2)

tl;dr: sometimes synthetic benchmarks do translate to reality. In any case this was quite fun to get to the bottom of it 😄

> [@dakull](#):
>
> Really interested what the differences are in real-life i.e. Rails benchmarks on both platforms - something tells me it won’t scale to the full +28.5% …

😲 **wrong**

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