Most motherboards and processors for less critical application are not designed to support ECC so their prices can be kept lower. Some ECC-enabled boards and processors are able to support unbuffered (unregistered) ECC, but will also work with non-ECC memory; system firmware enables ECC functionality if ECC RAM is installed.
ECC memory usually involves a higher price when compared to non-ECC memory, due to additional hardware required for producing ECC memory modules, and due to lower production volumes of ECC memory and associated system hardware. Motherboards, chipsets and processors that support ECC may also be more expensive.
ECC may lower memory performance by around 2–3 percent on some systems, depending on application and implementation, due to the additional time needed for ECC memory controllers to perform error checking.[28] However, modern systems integrate ECC testing into the CPU, generating no additional delay to memory accesses.[18][29]
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