Frustratingly, it's only unregistered that's stuck in limbo; VCC makes a kit of registered 7200.
Frustratingly, it's only unregistered that's stuck in limbo; VCC makes a kit of registered 7200.
There is no technical reason why ECC UDIMMs cannot be overclocked to the same extent and ECC actually makes them better for overclocking since they can detect when overclocking is starting to cause problems. You might notice that the non-ECC UDIMMs have pads and traces for an additional IC that is present on ECC UDIMMs. This should be because the ECC DIMMs and non-ECC DIMMs are made out of the same things. They use the same PCBs and the same chips. The main differences would be whether the extra chips to store ECC are on the module, what the SPD says it is and what the sticker says. There might also be some minor differences in what resistors are populated. Getting back to the topic of overclocking, if you are willing to go back to the days before the premium pre-overclocked kits existed, you will likely find a number of ECC UDIMMs can and will overclock with similar parameters. There is just no guarantee of that.
As for RDIMMs having higher transfer rates, let us consider the differences between a UDIMM, a CUDIMM and a RDIMM. The UDIMM connects directly to the CPU memory controller for the clock, address, control and data signals, while the RDIMM has a register chip that buffers the clock, address and control signals, although the data signals still connect to the memory controller directly. This improves signal integrity and lets more memory ICs be attached to the memory controller. A recent development is the CUDIMM, which is a hybrid of the two. In the CUDIMM, the clock signal is buffered by a Client Clock Driver, which does exactly what the register chip does to the clock signal in RDIMMs. CUDIMM are able to reach higher transfer rates than UDIMMs without overclocking because of the Client Clock Driver, and since RDIMMs also do what CUDIMMs do, they similarly can reach higher transfer rates.