Whatever happened to RDRAM?

[thelush84]

I remember when the P4 first was introduced it used RDRAM which ran at a superfast 800mhz. I haven't seen much of it in years and as far as I know there isn't a new cpu that utilizes this type of ram, why not? I know that when it was first out it was very spendy but at 800mhz it's head-and-shoulders above DDR in terms of speed.

Why not still use it?

 

[svi]

Awful latency. Also, high price. The price wasn't entirely RAMBUS's fault, as there was some nasty stuff going on behind the stage there, but it's a good reason for RDRAM's failure.

That's.. about it, I guess.

 

[thelush84]

As far as I know the latency issues was due to Intel using the Northbridge as the memory controller pushed the latency higher. The technology itself, as I understand it, puts RDRAM and DDR-SDRAM in similar catagories when it comes to latency.

 

[tyborg]

I use RDRAM on my current PC. Works great for me. I'm starting to build a new one though.

 

[klah]

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=502

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=503

 

[CalamitySymphony]

They're still here. They use RDRAM in everything from PS3/xbox360 to regular Graphics Cards for computers.

Of course, RDRAM DIMMS has yet to come alive again

 

[Fox5]

What PC graphics cards use RDRAM? I don't think I've ever seen one that didn't use some form of GDDR.

Anyhow, RDRAM disappeared because....
1. Too damn expensive. For the price of a stick of rdram, you could get an entire athlon system that would perform better.
2. RDRAM had very high latency, which greatly limited its performance.
3. DDR ram caught up in bandwidth, largely due to dual channel support.

 

[Missing Ghost]

Yes, RDRAM is not still used. Video cards don't use it. The new consoles don't use it also. I think it's something else made by rambus, like "xdr".

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Fox5
Anyhow, RDRAM disappeared because....
1. Too damn expensive. For the price of a stick of rdram, you could get an entire athlon system that would perform better.
2. RDRAM had very high latency, which greatly limited its performance.
3. DDR ram caught up in bandwidth, largely due to dual channel support.

Common misconceptions...

1) Rambus sued several dram makers for price fixing (as this was the reason that RDRam was overpriced compared to DDR). Many on this forum flamed rambus for doing so and bashed their lawyers; but just recently, Samsung has admitted to price fixing, along with several other major dram players.

2) High latency was only on the single channel i820 chipset. The dual channel i840 and i850 series had latency on par with DDR2. In fact, the i850 chipset's performance was not eclipsed until Canterwood.

3) DDR caught on in bandwidth because development of RDRam chipsets folded (see #1 on price fixing). On the roadmaps, Intel canceled a quad-channel RDRam chipset for the p4; if that went into production, the P4 would've had around 10GB/sec of FSB bandwidth.

---

On the side note, Rambus is an IP company. They develop plans and know-how for electronics, but don't produce anything. AFAIK, PS3 and Xbox360 use Rambus IP.

 

[alimoalem]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: Fox5
Anyhow, RDRAM disappeared because....
1. Too damn expensive. For the price of a stick of rdram, you could get an entire athlon system that would perform better.
2. RDRAM had very high latency, which greatly limited its performance.
3. DDR ram caught up in bandwidth, largely due to dual channel support.

Common misconceptions...

1) Rambus sued several dram makers for price fixing (as this was the reason that RDRam was overpriced compared to DDR). Many on this forum flamed rambus for doing so and bashed their lawyers; but just recently, Samsung has admitted to price fixing, along with several other major dram players.

2) High latency was only on the single channel i820 chipset. The dual channel i840 and i850 series had latency on par with DDR2. In fact, the i850 chipset's performance was not eclipsed until Canterwood.

3) DDR caught on in bandwidth because development of RDRam chipsets folded (see #1 on price fixing). On the roadmaps, Intel canceled a quad-channel RDRam chipset for the p4; if that went into production, the P4 would've had around 10GB/sec of FSB bandwidth.

---

On the side note, Rambus is an IP company. They develop plans and know-how for electronics, but don't produce anything. AFAIK, PS3 and Xbox360 use Rambus IP.

holy hell lol wonder what the amd fans would've said to that

 

[americruzano]

HAHA, "would have said to that"

point made, case closed

 

[Vegito]

BTW AMD just paid rambus butt load of money to license their technology for the next gen cpus. I think they just got greedy..

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: Fox5
Anyhow, RDRAM disappeared because....
1. Too damn expensive. For the price of a stick of rdram, you could get an entire athlon system that would perform better.
2. RDRAM had very high latency, which greatly limited its performance.
3. DDR ram caught up in bandwidth, largely due to dual channel support.

Common misconceptions...

1) Rambus sued several dram makers for price fixing (as this was the reason that RDRam was overpriced compared to DDR). Many on this forum flamed rambus for doing so and bashed their lawyers; but just recently, Samsung has admitted to price fixing, along with several other major dram players.

2) High latency was only on the single channel i820 chipset. The dual channel i840 and i850 series had latency on par with DDR2. In fact, the i850 chipset's performance was not eclipsed until Canterwood.

3) DDR caught on in bandwidth because development of RDRam chipsets folded (see #1 on price fixing). On the roadmaps, Intel canceled a quad-channel RDRam chipset for the p4; if that went into production, the P4 would've had around 10GB/sec of FSB bandwidth.

---

On the side note, Rambus is an IP company. They develop plans and know-how for electronics, but don't produce anything. AFAIK, PS3 and Xbox360 use Rambus IP.

1) How does the dram makers price fixing effect rdram's insane price? (were they making it for them?) All I remember from the rambus days was that there was no way I was going to pay that much money for ram. Ram was suppose to get cheaper, not more expensive.

3) Quad channel sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Dual channel already throws a monkey wrench into a lot of people's upgrade plans.

 

[imported_michaelpatrick33]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: dexvx

Originally posted by: Fox5
Anyhow, RDRAM disappeared because....
1. Too damn expensive. For the price of a stick of rdram, you could get an entire athlon system that would perform better.
2. RDRAM had very high latency, which greatly limited its performance.
3. DDR ram caught up in bandwidth, largely due to dual channel support.

Common misconceptions...

1) Rambus sued several dram makers for price fixing (as this was the reason that RDRam was overpriced compared to DDR). Many on this forum flamed rambus for doing so and bashed their lawyers; but just recently, Samsung has admitted to price fixing, along with several other major dram players.

2) High latency was only on the single channel i820 chipset. The dual channel i840 and i850 series had latency on par with DDR2. In fact, the i850 chipset's performance was not eclipsed until Canterwood.

3) DDR caught on in bandwidth because development of RDRam chipsets folded (see #1 on price fixing). On the roadmaps, Intel canceled a quad-channel RDRam chipset for the p4; if that went into production, the P4 would've had around 10GB/sec of FSB bandwidth.

---

On the side note, Rambus is an IP company. They develop plans and know-how for electronics, but don't produce anything. AFAIK, PS3 and Xbox360 use Rambus IP.

1) How does the dram makers price fixing effect rdram's insane price? (were they making it for them?) All I remember from the rambus days was that there was no way I was going to pay that much money for ram. Ram was suppose to get cheaper, not more expensive.

3) Quad channel sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Dual channel already throws a monkey wrench into a lot of people's upgrade plans.

1) Yes, these memory makers who had huge stakes in DDR did not want to see rdram take off because they would have had to pay royalties to Rambus for every module they made. They appeared to have conspired to drive the pricepoint up to help keep Rambus (with Intel's clout) from eliminating DDR. So the high prices you are complaining about appears to have been an illegal price fixing scheme by the DDR makers.

2) Quad channel would have been very beneficial for the bandwidth hungry Netburst P4's. Just look at their memory subsystem issues with their dualcore versus AMD. If the Quad channel rdram's had taken off Intel may have held onto the lead against the integrated memory controller of AMD. Who really knows though.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
3) Quad channel sounds like a massive pain in the ass. Dual channel already throws a monkey wrench into a lot of people's upgrade plans.

The quad channel setup was designed to still only require matched pairs of RIMMs, not sets of four. There were two channels built into each stick. I believe a few reviews of the techonology surfaced showing pretty impressive scores.

Oh, and as others have said, the latency issue was never as bad as many people would lead you to believe, especially once 1066MHz RIMMs appeared...

 

[PingSpike]

I still don't understand...how did the makers of DDR cause RDRam's price to rise? Did they have some sort of control over the suppliers of rambus?

 

[CrashX]

Price fixing or not, there is no way a licensed technology RAM was going to be as cheap as a JDEC standard ram such as DDR. Industry standards is always better for the industry IMO.

 

[sigpop]

can't say i fault the ram mfg for price fixing if it did occur. it's not as if intel doesn't play the monoply card when they want/need to.

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

1) How does the dram makers price fixing effect rdram's insane price? (were they making it for them?) All I remember from the rambus days was that there was no way I was going to pay that much money for ram. Ram was suppose to get cheaper, not more expensive.

I dont know but I sold 1gb rdram - 2 512 ecc on ebay for $223 - 45ns.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6839624944

2 512 ecc - @ 275 - 40 ns
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6839863566

2 Stick of 512 DDR is like 100 bucks now... the only good thing is rdram holds its value..

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Vegito

Originally posted by: PingSpike

1) How does the dram makers price fixing effect rdram's insane price? (were they making it for them?) All I remember from the rambus days was that there was no way I was going to pay that much money for ram. Ram was suppose to get cheaper, not more expensive.

I dont know but I sold 1gb rdram - 2 512 ecc on ebay for $223 - 45ns.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6839624944

2 512 ecc - @ 275 - 40 ns
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6839863566

2 Stick of 512 DDR is like 100 bucks now... the only good thing is rdram holds its value..

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there that got hung out to dry on rdram. No supply means they pay through the nose for probably used ram. If I were them, I'd just sell the motherboard and ram and replace the whole thing with DDR. No sense buying a dead technology, especially when its so expensive.

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Yeah, there's a lot of people out there that got hung out to dry on rdram. No supply means they pay through the nose for probably used ram. If I were them, I'd just sell the motherboard and ram and replace the whole thing with DDR. No sense buying a dead technology, especially when its so expensive.

Yeah, I had a dual xeon on rambus, I broke even selling 2gb ram + mobo to buy a x2 3800 with ddr & a8n-sli

and I had about 10 gigs of rambus.. 10 x 200 = 2000

 

[Pens1566]

I've got 2GB of PC1066 (4x512) that I'll be selling to offset some of the cost for my new rig.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I still don't understand...how did the makers of DDR cause RDRam's price to rise? Did they have some sort of control over the suppliers of rambus?

Because they also manufactured RDRAM. Rambus has no manufacturing facilities, they develope things, and have other manufacture them. The same companies that were making DDR were making RDRAM...

 

[OfficeLinebacker]

Originally posted by: Pens1566
I've got 2GB of PC1066 (4x512) that I'll be selling to offset some of the cost for my new rig.

PM Sent

 

[Steaksauce]

Originally posted by: Pens1566
I've got 2GB of PC1066 (4x512) that I'll be selling to offset some of the cost for my new rig.

Dude, you could probably retire now on top of the new rig!