DDR: At THAT price?

[ChipNOW]

Hey guys,
Is it just me, or are we negating the point that DDR is supposed to be a somewhat low cost platform? Presently, it is about a 40% premium over RAMBUS, and RAMBUS is undoubtedly a superior memory technology to DDR SDRAM. In this case, why are the chipset manufacturers (VIA specifically) flogging the benefits of DDR, when they could in fact introduce a dual channel RDRAM chipset for the same price?
Any suggestions?

 

[ChipNOW]

Doesn't ANYONE have any valid points to make about this?

 

[chiwawa626]

Shhh.....dont let anyone know











i dont know what ur talking bout

 

[BigLance]

I agree with you for the most part: DDR is way to expensive right now, RDRAM isn't near the cost... although that is partially due to the fact that DDR is newer...they say it will come down... someday

Just one clarification: I don't kow of your statement about RDRAM being "better" than DDR accurate. It sure sounds like it would be: 800 MHz etc. But, the bits of RD are only 16 and DDR is 64 I believe, also, RDRAM has a higher latency. I think they actually perform about the same, not knocking your statement- just altering it a lil

 

[ChipNOW]

What I'm saying is the cost of DDR is grossly inproportionate to it's benefits as compared to RDRAM, which is now cheaper than DDR.

 

[ChipNOW]

Wait up... I said the technology behind it was superior, not the memory itself

 

[Czar]

Not realy, DDR is like alot better, mostly because of Latency, and other bugs, like if you have RDRAM and you want to fetch small part of information it has to flush all the memmory bank and then put it back there. I could be wrong, could be the same with SDRAM.

But according to everything I have read then DDR and RDR is about the same in transfare rate, but next step from DDR is QDR, twice as fast as DDR. Think about Dual bus QDR .. drool

 

[Leo V]

IMHO, we're seeing merchants milk DDR memory for all they can get, its technical merits aside. I absolutely believe the technology is superior to RDRAM for the near future. Also, the open DDR standard is superior by definition.

I won't be getting DDR system memory for a while--support hasn't matured and prices are bloated. But I probably couldn't afford my 512MB PC133/CAS2 SDRAM if the incoming DDR didn't help decrease its price.

 

[goldboyd]

crucial is selling 256meg ddr pc1600 for $135.99, what's the problem with that?

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

DDR platforms are suck right now. The VIA AP266 can't even beat an 815 in real life apps.

And the AMD760 isn't all that much better than KT133e based boards.

Wait for better chipset support - thats the bottom line.

 

[Dulanic]

You also have to remeber... there is how many DDR boards readily available right now? 1? That leaves for little demand, plus the small supply, leads to high prices. Give it a bit it will drop, it doesnt cost much more at all to produce, but when they when the demand and supply is low they only make a small amout.... the less you make the more expensive it is to make.

 

[Dulanic]

<< DDR platforms are suck right now. The VIA AP266 can't even beat an 815 in real life apps.

And the AMD760 isn't all that much better than KT133e based boards.

Wait for better chipset support - thats the bottom line. >>



The Intel DDR platforms wont do much better, but it isnt alot worse like RDRAM was. There just isnt the FSB bandwith for DDR to be efficent for the P3 platform right now.

As for the 760.... Check out Toms... he compared production boards which perform alot better then the reference board Anand is using.

 

[Soccerman]

And the AMD760 isn't all that much better than KT133e based boards.

DDR IS the way to get more performance out of your Athlon. the 760 does give a performance benefit over all other AMD Athlon solutions, take a look at Toms Hardware.

Anandtech reviewed a reference board, Tom is working with production boards.

760 is far superior to the KT133, and superior to the KT133a.

 

[Riverhound]

I don't know if DDR1600 is faster than RAMBUS or not but it is currently on pricewatch for $88 for 128mb. The DDR2100 is still over $130 but its falling.

 

[Degenerate]

Both the p3 and Athlon dont greatly benifit from the high band width of Rdram and ddr in every appz.

 

[Soccerman]

Degenerate, the P3 doesn't because it's FSB limited (100mhz 64 bit FSB, which is 6.4 gigabits, or 800 MegaBytes).

the Athlon DOES benefit from increased RAM speed, though first it needs a fast enough pipe to the northbridge to handle all communications (it doesn't only talk to RAM you know).

try putting a P4 on PC600 RDRAM (300mhz 16 bit, DDR, AND there are 2 channels, thus giving you..

2.4 gigabytes per second. that is 300 megabytes per second faster then DDR SDRAM @ 133mhz. the FSB of the P4 is still at 400mhz is it not? thus giving you 3.2 gigabytes per second.

RAM Bandwidth is extremely important to the P4 (look at Anandtechs LinPack results).

ALSO if there was a way to underclock the FSB to make it run at 50mhz, or 66mhz (giving you about 200mhz, or 266mhz becuase it's Quad Pumped) and leave the RAM at 3.2 gigabytes a second, we could prove that the P4 relies heavily on FSB.

if the Athlon were running on a faster FSB (to compare to the P4's FSB) of 200mhz, and the RAM the same, I expect that you will get similar improvements in scores compared to a P4 running PC600 and PC800 RDRAM (btw, that means there are 32 wires for RAM).

 

[ChipNOW]

PC1600 performs poorly, just like PC600 RDRAM - they're low(er) cost transition solutions.
Given all this though, on your prefered CPU and chipset, would you prefer DDR or RDR?

 

[Sohcan]

Where are you getting this 40% price premium over Rambus figure from?

Latest prices from Pricewatch:
256 MB:
PC800 RDRAM - $468
PC2100 DDR SDRAM - $284

128 MB:
PC800 RDRAM - $140
PC2100 DDR SDRAM - $146

64 MB:
PC800 RDRAM - $100
PC2100 DDR SDRAM - $88

The only reason DDR SDRAM and RDRAM seem like they cost so much right now is because SDRAM is dirt cheep...the prices for the two memories are about at the same level when SDRAM was at its peek price 9-12 months ago.

Anyway, the reason people have said DDR will be a low-cost platform is because the memory costs little more to produce over SDR SDRAM (yield is the same, production lines don't need to be retooled). Right now, supply is low, and demand is high...the result? High prices.

 

[ChipNOW]

OK... were a 40% premium - <5% now

 

[gUEv]

you can get 128mb of 1600ddr for $70...i dont see what is so unreasonable about that, seeing as how it just came out.

 

[ChipNOW]

Yeah but PC1600 performs equal to or worse than conventional PC133 - that's the point I'm trying to make... the performance benefits are not worth the cost, as compared to RDRAM

 

[sandorski]

Hmm, are we forgetting that RDRAM was 10x the cost of SDRAM with no benefit when it was first introduced?

 

[OneEng]

RDRAM was 10 TIMES THE COST OF SDRAM when it came out!

DDR is simply experiencing a little profit taking by the RAM manufacturers since they are getting squeezed so hard on SDRAM right now.

RDRAM is inhearently more expensive to produce than SDRAM and will NEVER be equal in production cost to SDRAM because of this.

DDR should equalize out at the same prices as SDRAM when it becomes more prolific. There is no fundamental difference in manufacturing from SDRAM to DDRAM.

RDRAM is fundamentally inferior to DDR due to its high latency. DDR and QDR FSB applications will render RDRAM obsolete within 3 years. Anyone want to make a bet with me on this one?

 

[Smbu]

DDR doesn't cost nearly as much as RDRAM when it first came out. Once more DDR mobo's start to come out then the price will most likely drop.

Both the P3 and the Tbird and Duron don't really maximize the potential of DDR, since they were made with the idea that they would be using standard SDRAM(PC100 and PC133).

soccerman: in your calculation for the P3 memory bandwidth you didn't count the P3's that run on a 133mhz fsb.

 

[Dulanic]

<< PC1600 performs poorly, just like PC600 RDRAM - they're low(er) cost transition solutions.
Given all this though, on your prefered CPU and chipset, would you prefer DDR or RDR? >>



It performs poorly because its on a 200Mhz Bus (PC2100 runs on 266Mhz bus).... if we could run asyncrynous(spelling?) like VIA chipsets have PC1600 would do alot better.