> > what sort of protection does ECC ram give me?

> Side-band ECC (which is what you'd use on desktops/workstations/servers) doesn't have a performance hit, as the overhead of ECC is fully neutralized by the additional bandwidth and capacity of an ECC DIMM.

This is true as far as I know but only for comparing ECC ram vs non ECC ram that is otherwise equivalent. But if you want the fastest ram available, it doesn't support ECC, so you're still taking a perf hit by buying slower ram with ECC support than you could get without ECC