DDR OR NOT?

[bhungy]

How much performance do you get between DDR or PC133 and are the performance boost worth the price?

 

[Daxxax]

The price really isn't that much more and from what I have heard it's about a 10% perforance increase and that should go up in the future when software is geared towards the extra bandwidth, I was debating that for a long time too but I'm going with a DDR I think I'll be happy I did a year from now. just me two cents.

 

[heffe734]

DDR

 

[boran]

Well, by the end of august i'll be constructing my gear, it'll be a totally newbuilt system, so it would be crazy not to go for DDR, right now the choice comes more down to :

if u have some PC133 memory lying around that u really cant miss (sentimental value or it is PC150 munchkin ram that u bought to get yer duron up the Ghz barrier) then u go for a K133A motherboard

However if you're building a new system then there is no question about it that you should go with DDR (make sure u get PC2100 or even PC2400)
because that's future expandable (meaning: u will probably be able to use it in yer next motherboard/system upgrade) and the price difference isnt that big (less than $10 for 128 MB dimms and around $30 for 256 MB dimms (which I recommend cous u only have 2 slots, so 512 seems a good amount of mem to have ..)

 

[Praxis]

I've looked at several hardware sites, but haven't seen many direct comparisons of benchmarks between Socket A chipsets. I understand that the AMD 760 seems faster than the KT266s, which in turn do better than the Ali Magik 1. But do they have any real world advantage over a decent KT133A board and high quality SDRAM running present real world 32 bit applications? Probably the next generation of DDR, like the SiS 735, will convincingly smoke SDRAM boards, but for right now I'm not convinced that a DDR rig is worth the extra $30 or so. Seems like you could get more bang for your buck buying a faster CPU.

 

[chainbolt]

<< I've looked at several hardware sites, but haven't seen many direct comparisons of benchmarks between Socket A chipsets. I understand that the AMD 760 seems faster than the KT266s, which in turn do better than the Ali Magik 1. But do they have any real world advantage over a decent KT133A board and high quality SDRAM running present real world 32 bit applications? Probably the next generation of DDR, like the SiS 735, will convincingly smoke SDRAM boards, but for right now I'm not convinced that a DDR rig is worth the extra $30 or so. Seems like you could get more bang for your buck buying a faster CPU. >>




they have, as you can see in basically every benchmark. PC 133 is history, all new boards anyway come for DDR. In real life to see and feel a difference is difficult and depends on the situation. If i'm surfing and just writing a Office document, my girlfriends Duron 700 machine is as fast as my 1333@1600 with 512 MB PC2100 CL 2,0 RAM. In 3Dmark 2001 you SEE the difference in the soces.

 

[Praxis]

Chainbolt, I'm not questioning that the DDR boards do better in benchmarks, particularly synthetic memory related ones like Sandra's memory BM. But the question that has not been answered to my satisfaction is exactly how much better do the DDR boards do more &quot;real world&quot; BMs, like ZD's Business or Content Creation Winstones. Virtually all the detailed comparisons I've seen, like your overclockers.com 3 computer review, compare boards within the same chipset. As Daxxax mentioned,I've seen figures of about a 10% performance increase bruited about, but I can't seem to find detailed specifics.
I am a &quot;value&quot; shopper and not a gamer. Though Crucial DDR is the same price as Crucial CAS 2 PC133 (or even slightly less), high density sticks that will work in KT133s are about half as expensive, even with the Crucial free U.S. shipping. So the price difference between, say a Epox EP-8KTA3 and a EP-87KA with 256 of budget CAS3 PC133 vs. DDR 2100 is more than $50 USD, or about 10% of total budget system price. I don't expect a huge difference between Pentium 300+ systems when surfing the web or composing a letter (though I really appreciate the extra speed and memory when I scroll through my 800 fonts for a specific one), but I don't want to pay $50 for an edge that only a machine can detect when I know that next year something much faster will come along.

 

[nicowju]

DDR. There's now almost no price difference between DDR DIMMs and SDR DIMMs. Unless you think of the 512MB DDR ECC Registered ones

 

[Praxis]

<< There's now almost no price difference between DDR DIMMs and SDR DIMMs. Unless you think of the 512MB DDR ECC Registered ones >>

Minimum prices from Pricewatch:
MB: 256 512
DDR2100 $46 $259
PC133 $17 $42
What's more, most DDR boards only have 2 DIMM slots, so if you want more than 512 MB you have to pay a considerable premium. And there may be some applications that do better with 512-768 MB of CAS 3 PC133 than 256 MB of PC2100 at a similar price point.

 

[PurdueTech]

<<

<<
What's more, most DDR boards only have 2 DIMM slots, so if you want more than 512 MB you have to pay a considerable premium. And there may be some applications that do better with 512-768 MB of CAS 3 PC133 than 256 MB of PC2100 at a similar price point. >>



If you wait for the Abit KG7-RAID motherboard you will have 4 DIMM slots. The board supports up to 4 Gb of DDR SDRAM!!!:Q

 

[bevo]

<< If you wait for the Abit KG7-RAID motherboard you will have 4 DIMM slots. The board supports up to 4 Gb of DDR SDRAM!!! >>

Yep, but if you want to use 3 or more slots, you need registered ddr...Just like all amd761 chipset MB's with more than 2 slots...

 

[Einz]

DDR all the way, especially with Crucial's current pricing

 

[Grendel99]

That pricewatch ram is probably crap stuff. Good ram like crucial is about the same price(between ddr and sdr for crucial).

 

[Praxis]

<< That pricewatch ram is probably crap stuff. Good ram like crucial is about the same price(between ddr and sdr for crucial). >>

The low end PC133 RAM is high density which will cause CTSPD to go &quot;WTF is that?&quot; But though it won't handle CAS 2, the 3 pieces of high density RAM I've played with seemed stable at 133/CAS-3 and some folks push the high density memory up to 143-150 MHz without incident. I have 2 sticks of Crucial CAS 2 as well as other decent RAM (Mushkin, Excelerate), but I have to say that though the good (and expensive) memory will run faster at more aggressive timings, I don't notice that it is more reliable than the glop (Zeus, high density) if you don't push the junk beyond its rated capacity. Moreover, I think even high quality PC133 still has a small price advantage over PC2100. PowerUp, for instance, which gets high resellersratings, sells 256 MB of CAS 2 Micron for $43. And of course PC133 is still MUCH cheaper if you want 512+ MB sticks.
And sometimes size matters, no matter what they say. For Win9X I prefer smaller increments of fast high quality, because it won't really take advantage of much more than 128 MB. But for a pre-emptive OS, like W2K or Linux I'd rather have large smelly heaps of RAM, even if it is 10% slower than CAS 2. Even slow RAM is faster than swapping on to your hard drive.
I'm not saying that DDR isn't a superior technology, only that I'd appreciate it if someone could steer me towards a site that tells me exactly HOW much faster DDR rigs are running various real world apps.
At this particular moment I think I'd still steer the budget conscious towards a KT133 solution for a general purpose machine. For instance, Fry's is hawking a FIC KT133 board and a Duron 750 for $79. Combine that with a stick of cheap but decent PC133 (I just ordered 3 256MB sticks of low density CAS 3 from Dell for $101 delivered) and maybe a Maxtor 5400 RPM 30 gig ($59 after $20 MIR at CompUSA this Sunday)...oh wait, this isn't the Hot Deals Forum.

 

[frankroh]

Damn dude, if Bhungy is THAT anal over blowing 50 extra bucks on 256MB DDR SDRAM and DDR mobo, he shouldn't even have started this thread. If he IS, then by all means, buy some EDO, I mean PC133 sticks.

Anyone who've bought a 512MB stick of any kind of memory, please raise your hand.

 

[boran]

Well If I could find some I would rather buy a single stick of 512 MB DDR memory so then I have expandibilty to 1 GB later (only 2 dimm slots)

 

[greenpoint]

More and more confused.
from Toms Hardware:



<< A KT266 review of the German online magazine 'CHIP Online' that had been published very ambitiously in English was recently raising hopes that VIA's Apollo KT266 chipset would not perform as poorly as what had been seen by many reviewers in the weeks before CeBIT. I was also able to see improvements, but although I was using the very same board and revision, KT266 is still way too slow to challenge or even replace AMD's 760 chipset.

The step to the new and currently more expensive memory solution DDR-SDRAM should be justifiable with a noticeable performance gain, unless TeamDDR wants to play with the same questionable tactics as the Rambus/Intel combo. Right now, the only platform that could just about justify the usage of DDR-SDRAM is AMD's Athlon processor plus AMD's 760 chipset. Many people like to say that future processors at higher clock speeds will be able to take more advantage of DDR-SDRAM, but I would like to demystify this belief. As long as the processor bus specs of Athlon don't change, it ain't gonna be able to benefit from memory with higher data bandwidth. PERIOD! What it WILL benefit from however are lower latencies. VIA as well as ALi have presented DDR-platforms that may just as well provide the DDR-typical peak memory bandwidth of 2.1 GB/s, but at latencies that slow Athlon down rather than accelerate it. All the gain of DDR's higher data bandwidth over PC133 SDRAM is lost again due to sad latency issues. TeamDDR has got to stop those things from happening, unless it wants to risk the marketing-value of the term 'DDR'.

As a conclusion, I could maybe say the typical words always used in early reviews &quot;let's hope VIA will finally improve KT266&quot;. However, I have my doubts if this will happen any time soon. My advice to you is to either forget about DDR altogether for the time being, or to go for Athlon plus AMD760 and NOTHING ELSE. ALi and VIA will try their hardest to benefit from the current DDR-hype to cover up the rather disappointing performance of their DDR-solutions.

Taiwanese motherboard maker won't make this choice easy for you though. As it seems, VIA's Apollo KT266 is about $10 cheaper than AMD's 760. This is reason enough to produce more KT266 DDR-motherboards than AMD760-motherboards. There is also the rumor that AMD has problems supplying reasonable volumes of AMD760. As a result you will see hyped DDR-platforms with ALi or VIA chipset all over the place. The best way to handle this fuss is to ask yourself if you really need top performance. VIA's Apollo KT133A still provides a reliable and very well performing Athlon platform and it only requires the cheaper PC133 SDRAM. If you really want DDR, go AMD760!
>>



Are the DDR mature?

greenpoint

 

[hokahknow]

Go DDR