Just how cheap will ram get?

[xraymongral]

Boy oh boy, here I sit looking at two 32 meg EDO simm's that I paid $200 a piece for, thinking crap, I could buy gig of ram for that now!

So, just how cheap do ya'all think ram will get? It sure has dropped fast in just the past 6 weeks. I am not sure if I should grab a 256 meg stick of cas2 for $100, or if it is going to get way cheaper real soon?

With the advent of DDR and rambus, it would seem like a safe bet that SDRAM will drop a good bit more in price, once DDR gets more mainstream. But then on the other hand, look at the prices of EDO now!

Oh well, I think I will go pop a Xanex and stop worrying about it

 

[Dark4ng3l]

It will probably get higher when rambus wins it's lawsuits and forces companies to pay royalties to them.

 

[Jeff H]

I was at my VAR yesterday, and bought a 128MB stick of Micron PC133 CAS2, just to stick in the closet. I asked the guy behind the counter what he thought memory was going to do, and he's of the opinion it's about as low as it will go. W/ the advent of DDR many of the RAM manufacturers will switch production, and over the long term SDRAM will likely go the route you mention of EDO, namely higher.

 

[ScienceFictionTwin]

There are those that believe it is at its lowest right now. This is due to the fact that there is a huge inventory glut that occured over the holiday buying time which coincided with a Stock Market slowdown and had people wary of spending large amounts of money.

Just from checking prices everyday on Pricewatch.com for the past few months I can tell you that it has been pretty stable for the past couple of weeks.

I Just bought some myselfand I am anything other than an impulse buyer. I've been doing research on a system for the last few months, hence the checking of pricewatch everyday.

 

[sohcrates]

i just ordered up 256 more megs of memory (pc133 cas 2) from crucial.com today. i've been tracking this stuff for several months now...and i agree that it's been relatively stable for several weeks....they have some "put in your company name and get an extra 15 % off" thingy goin on now, so that put the 256 megs down to $112 !

now i will have 1/2 a gig of ram. the ONLY way i could justify this was that it was 256 megs for $112 ! i certainly don't NEED the ram, but it's only $112! at least, that's how my mind works....

i agree, it's not gonna go much below 50 cents/meg...man, it used to be that $1/meg was a bargain!

 

[Whitedog]

Just think when 512Mbit chips come out... (and they will)... followed by 1024 Mbit chips..

I remember buying 8MB simms for $140 apiece back in '95.. I thought "WHAT A DEAL!" Ram has steadily dropped in price just as everything else in the PC business...
CPU - $/Mhz drops when faster comes out...
Hard drive - $/MB drops when bigger drives come out...
RAM - $/MB drops when production methods become more efficient, when dencer chips come out.

I remember when 128MB DIMMS were 16 chip only (64Mbit chips). Now, you can get 128MB DIMMS with only 4 chips (256Mbit chips)

It's just fortunate that production methods have gone the way they have... If you know your memory history, it used to cost manufacturers a FORTUNE to make memory chips...

Welcome to the Techno world

Soon, 512Mbit chips will be out and 1GB DIMMS will be available. Soon after that, 1024Mbit chips will be out and 2GB DIMMS will be available.

How much do you think a 256MB DIMM will cost by then? My guess would be about $25.

I mean REALLY! 768Megs of Ram will be like having 96megs now (3x32MB DIMMS)

Am I wrong?

 

[Whitedog]

<<man, it used to be that $1/meg was a bargain! >>

Some of us remember paying $100/Meg for 30 pin simms... don't think &quot;it's not going to get any cheaper than this&quot; because you are fooling only yourself.

 

[Whitedog]

I remember when Hard drive space cost more than $1 per MegaByte. Now, we are close to paying $1 per GIGAByte!

 

[sohcrates]

sorry. my $1/meg for RAM reference was supposed to be a reference to the pricing scheme of not much more than a year ago. (when i first bought my pc133 ram)...unfortunately, in my writing the reply, i forgot to include that!

man, $100/meg. just WHAT were users thinking? i'll tell you what they were thinking.. &quot;man this is a good deal!&quot; .

heheheeheh

 

[Pyro]

Here is a question that is quite important to me:

do you guys think that these prices will hold for another 5-6 weeks? ie, not drop, but not rise???

i am building a new comp in march and am very concerned about the price of ram...

 

[Whitedog]

Actually, I cried for hours (not really) when I &quot;had&quot; to upgrade... Back in those days, you ONLY upgraded when you Absolutly HAD TO! There was no such animal as a machine that was maxed out!

When I had my system with the first HD I owned, it was a 40MB scsi (1990). I cringed at the though of having to buy a bigger drive. I had to keep deleting stuff to keep enough free space...

Now, I have 10 gig's of free hard drive space and am going to be buying a new 80 gig HD with my tax money. :|

 

[Whitedog]

<<...and am very concerned about the price of ram... >>

?????????? Concerned?????????????

If I were in the market to buy RAM right now, I'd be leaping for Joy! Concerned?

 

[GoldenTiger]

Pyro, buy a 256mb stick at $95 now and not have to worry. If it drops $10 in March, you'll at least know that you paid the extra $10 for peace of mind and the not-having-to-worry is worth it I think .

 

[Pyro]

i guss you guys are right...

i just wanted to buy everything at once...


i just wish the damned KT133a boards would make it up here (canada) a bit faster

 

[compuwiz1]

The Infineon I was selling for $119ea for 256MB stick, is definitely going up next week, so I was told today. $8-10 to start.
I'm gonna be able to run one sale on it this weekend, at the old price, then all bets are off.

 

[XeonTux]

Whitedog: I remember when Hard drive space cost more than $1 per MegaByte. Now, we are close to paying $1 per GIGAByte!

And where exactly can I buy harddrives for $1/GB?!?!

 

[jdavis]

Whitedog- how bout those C64 days when a 20 MB hard drive set you back a grand? About $50 per MB! Man oh man how things have changed since then:

circa 1986:
1 MHz CPU
64 K(!) RAM
300 baud (that is BITS per second- you could read faster than that) dial up modem speed
20 MB hard drive cost $1000 (the Lt. Colonel for those of you lucky enough to remember those days!!!)

NOW:
1000 MHz CPUs
256 Megabytes of RAM
300,000 baud (rough approximation of average cable modem bandwidth)
40 GB of hard drive space is common

If technology has advanced more than 1000 fold between these times, imagine where we will be when I'm say, in my early 40s???

Imagine:

1 Terahertz CPUs
256 Gigabytes of RAM
30,000,000 baud (really)broadband connections
40 Terabytes of hard drive space.

WOW. How many FPS could I do in Quake XXVII at 1600x1200 with that setup?


JD

 

[Mule]

will depend on the videocard

 

[gUEv]

i think he was joking man...sigh

 

[Pakman]

Hmmmm... I think the computer on Star Trek Voyager was running at 2Terahertz...

or was it 200 Terahertz??

 

[Whitedog]

<<And where exactly can I buy harddrives for $1/GB?!?! >>

READ MAN! READ!

&quot;Now, we are close to paying $1 per GIGAByte!&quot; That's a 100gig hard drive for $100. We are getting close to that.

It's not things like FPS that are going to increase as much, even though games are capable of 200+ FPS now a days ... It's polygon counts that are going to be getting better... Faster compters are going to = Higher quality graphics...

Quake 3 is supposed to be something like 10k polygons/frame. Future games will be more like 1M polygons/frame. SWEET!

 

[Whitedog]

[i[<<My predictions for 3 years from now are: 8.5Ghz-12Ghz Intel Pentium 7's, and AMD Athon 3's, 2GB QDR-SDRAM>>[/i]

Pretty serious predictions... but highly unlikely for only 3 years time. Generally, CPU speeds double every 18 months.. The last year and a half the pace accelerated, due to mostly AMD catching up with Intel techno-wise and thus a speed war broke out. I think the speed war has significantly slowed, and isn't going to get crazy again anytime soon.

It's been predicted Intel will have 2GHz P4's soon, but it's I don't think we will see 3GHz anything until late next year... nothing is road-mapped for that. Maybe by 2003 we will be between 3-4 GHz. and by sometime in 2004 we'll be at 5GHz. I think by this time, new technologies will have been developed other than the plain silicon waffers of today.

Who knows!

I don't know about CPU's, but I am visualizing PC's with 4GB's RAM with Video cards capable of 1M Poly's per frame @ 100 FPS.

 

[MGMorden]

I just want those LCD monitors to come down. A computer I was working on today had one and I finally realised that I MUST have one. Only problem is that my current monitor is a 19&quot; (18&quot; viewable) and I know I would regret getting an LCD w/ a smaller screen, so I'm waiting till 18&quot; LCD's hit below $1000 (or maybe $1200), then I'll get one.

 

[MGMorden]

Crap. That's what I get for not checking prices of the things for a month. IBM 18&quot; flats are now $1279. Min price on those just a month or so ago was around $1800.

 

[wyvrn]

It will go up like EDO did when it is no longer the standard and is scarcer to find. If you are a builder or re-seller, I would think you would be ordering gobs of it now at these prices.