What is DDR-II, when will motherboards support it, and is it worth waiting for?

[foocoding]

I'm building a new comp, and all of a sudden I hear about DDR-II.

Is this a huge leap in technology I should wait for? I'll be building the new PC in september and buying the parts shortly before. Will it be out by then?

I google'd the subject to no avail Sorry.

Thanks!

 

[mrman3k]

DDRII is basically the next evolution or speed jump for DDR. Maybe if you post your system specs or what your intents are for upgrading I can give you some more advice. But just so you know DDR II will be coming out about begginning of 2003.

 

[Soulkeeper]

If you need a computer now don't even bother waiting

 

[Duvie]

dual channel ddr boards will be coming out for the p4's this fall...They run current ddr ram but allow each dimm to have its own pipeline to the cpu....The knock on the ddr is that it cannot meet the bandwidth requirements of the p4 as it ramps up in the fsb...

400fsb produces 3.2gb bandwidth...that can be handled by 400mhz ddr...

533fsb produces 4.3gb bandwidth...only thing to come close to that is pc1200 rdram...

future prescott 666fsb produces 5.3gb bandwidth..what will help that!!!! maybe dual pc2700 or pc3200 ddr....


I dont think it effectively doubles...meaning pc2100 which is 2.1gb of bandwidth in a dual channel means 4.2gbs....BUt it drastically improves the bandwidth...there are some reviews floating around from last month and I believe pc2100 in dual situation was putting out around 3.2gb or pc1066 levels...Had they ran it with pc2700 or higher who knows...

 

[foocoding]

Dammit... another tough decision.

Thanks for the help guys.

This is the PC i'll be taking to university in the spring, I won't have money to upgrade at a later time.

I certainly don't NEED the PC soon, but I dont want to wait that long.. Oh well you guys can't help me with that

 

[Zugzwang152]

You could always buy a low-end mobo and RAM now, and then when ddr-II comes out, just upgrade them to complete your full package. I'm sure you could stand running SDRAM on a 40 dollar mobo for a few months and then use the money left over to upgrade to DDR-II and a brand new dual channel mobo. That is, if you can bear tthe thought of a high XP or P4 running with SDRAM

 

[lambasa]

Do not waste your time with DDR2. I've seen the specs, if you want fast memory now, buy PC1066 Rambus on an 850e MB.

 

[BillClo]

You might go over to Hard OCP and check this article out. It is a summary of DDR-II...it's a bit technical, but basically, DDR-II should give about a 20% increase in available bandwidth.

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjM4

 

[zephyrprime]

That article at hard OCP is very interesting but it's simply wrong about DDR-II. I don't know everything about ddr-ii but I do know that it uses a quad-pumped bus and not double-pumped like ddr. It is also 1.8V versus ddr's 2.5V. This seems to imply a process shrink.

quad pumped

So DDR-II should offer at least twice the bandwidth and slightly lower latency clock-for-clock.

 

[Soccerman]

from what I've heard from the guys at Beyond3D forums, DDR II is simply DDR SDRAM but designed to run at higher clock rates. it has one disadvantage (at least when it comes to video cards) and that is that it has an extended (from 2bit in DDR to 4 bit in DDR2) burst or something like that, which means a slightly higher latency which isn't good for video with all its fast z-buffering etc.

however that is the only shortcoming I know of, and it is only noticeable when comparing the two at the same clockspeed (even then it is negligeable). The guys at Beyond3D were talking about clockspeeds in the 500mhz range, which would not necessarily appear on motherboards anytime soon (unless it is really needed badly). In fact, AMD has no current plans to bring DDR II to the K7 core, but to leave it to the Hammer CPU, so if you want an AMD system with DDR II you'll have to wait for Hammer, at the very least. Intel has given no indication on when it will release a chipset supporting DDR II, but I suspect if it becomes viable, they may finally get rid of RDRAM (RDRAM has the ability to scale pretty darn high), at least in the consumer market.

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: BillClo
You might go over to Hard OCP and check this article out. It is a summary of DDR-II...it's a bit technical, but basically, DDR-II should give about a 20% increase in available bandwidth.

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MjM4

Yes, but did you include the added benefits of dual-channel as well? Dual-channel DDR-II is supposed make significant gains over single channel DDR, and that may just be the added boost that Hammer might need in the future...

 

[BillClo]

Zugswang,

I just pointed him to the article. Most of it was over my head, personally. It'll be interesting to see how it actually works out.

 

[HelzBelz]

Originally posted by: foocoding
I'm building a new comp, and all of a sudden I hear about DDR-II.

Is this a huge leap in technology I should wait for? I'll be building the new PC in september and buying the parts shortly before. Will it be out by then?

I google'd the subject to no avail Sorry.

Thanks!

Just making sure that we don't get mixed up in terminology here : "DDRII" and "Dual-channel DDR" just AREN'T the same...

DDRII = next evolution, lower voltage, not compatible with present day DDR.

Dual-channel = relates to the memory controller; two channels of DDR (or possibly DDRII in the future...)

 

[zephyrprime]

From what I've heard from the guys at Beyond3D forums, DDR II is simply DDR SDRAM but designed to run at higher clock rates. it has one disadvantage (at least when it comes to video cards) and that is that it has an extended (from 2bit in DDR to 4 bit in DDR2) burst or something like that, which means a slightly higher latency which isn't good for video with all its fast z-buffering etc.

I read in the hardcop article that ddr ii has a fixed burst length of 4 while ddr has a burst length of 4 or 8. But it doesn't matter because of some sort of thingie in ddr-ii. I really doubt that the latency is any higher.

And the guy above me is absolutely right regarding dual channel and such.

I went to the jedec site to get some info straight from the horses mouth but I would have had to join or something to get info.