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Recently I have been testing several AMD G34 and Intel 5520 series platforms. Each AMD G34 CPU requires four sticks of memory for full quad channel operation, and each Intel CPU requires at least three DIMMs for triple channel operation. With fourteen G34 sockets and dodeca core Magny cours CPUs in various stages of testing, the G34 platforms alone require a minimum of 56 DIMMs. Needless to say, recently I have found myself scrambling to find sets of matching DIMMs and purchased Amazon.com’s entire inventory of 2x 1GB ECC 1333 DIMM kits one week (over a dozen pairs.) This led me to alternative sources, which turned out to be perilous. Read the full story

Today, the vast majority of memory used by desktops, notebooks, and mobile devices is unbuffered non-ECC (Error Checking and Correction) DRAM. In fact, unless one is running an Intel or AMD CPU that can support ECC memory unbuffered ECC DRAM is the only choice for most users. Intel Xeons, for example, support ECC memory, while even the new Core i7′s do not. AMD has much broader ECC support at the CPU level, but many AMD motherboards do not support ECC memory features so it is not universal. Read the full story

Regular readers of my site know that I am a fan of the Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G 4GB (2x2GB) ECC Unbuffered DIMM kit. It works in Intel 3400 chipset motherboards that are picky about memory. Two major changes have been happening with regard to this memory. Read the full story

A quick browse of Anandtech.com shows a nice dissection of WHS Drive Extender v2.

The review goes into changes from Drive Extender v1, the way NTFS and the storage pool interact, 1GB file chunks distributed across hard drives in a Raid 0 fashion, 2 bit ECC, application compatability, and even a comparison with ZFS.

See the story at Anandtech.com here.