So I've been forced to deal with an issue.
We have a very large project we are starting in Revit (~1.2million sqft), many arch and mep models, many consultants and me for structural.
I've been told I should be able to keep everything in one model but I may need to split it down the road (which is preferred at this point).
So our IT guys got us some new Z210 boxes with the i-7 chips. So the first thing I found out is that I think I'm limited in the amount of Ram I can put in it.
Second thing I was told is that the i7 doesn't support ECC ram.
So my current box is a Z400 with xeon 2.8ghz multi-threaded something or other. It has 6 slots for ram and I currently run 18GB of ECC. But I could add more. I don't think I'd need more that 32gb for this project, but you never know.

So 2 questions for the really smart people out there.
1.) Is ECC Ram needed (is there a real benefit) and is it worth the price?
2.) What's better the ability to have ECC ram and have more of it or be limited on Ram, not have ECC ram but a faster processor?
I asked for the faster Xeon, but IT doesn't want to shell out the cash for it.
Any thoughts or opinions
Thanks in advance.