Quick 775 question.

[Private_Ops]

I never really messed with the 775 era much (I had AMD).

If the chipset (975x) supports ECC... do I need to run a Xeon CPU? I'm assuming no, since the controller is in the chipset.

 

[Concentric]

Your question is a little ambiguous; do you mean:

do I need to run a Xeon CPU in order to utilise ECC?

or

do I need to run a Xeon CPU to use this board, period

?

My understanding is that you can use that chipset with any socket-775 CPU, but it would only work with ECC memory if the CPU were a Xeon.

 

[Private_Ops]

With the 975X chipset, do I need a Xeon CPU to utilize ECC.

 

[dragonstongue]

975x supports ECC although desktop chips Intel wise do not support ECC(to the best of my knowledge) you need a Xeon to make use of it. For AMD it would be Opteron(meaning buffered ECC) Generally it is the IMC that allows the ECC to work and before the IMC was on the chip well of course that meant the motherboard or microcode allowing or preventing it in the first place.

I do recall there were socket 775 chips that you could choose Xeon or Core 2 and they were essentially the same.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1017675
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=142113.20;wap2
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d975xbx/