Why do the majority of people here like DDR better than RDRAM??

[fkloster]

To my knowledge, the search feature here @ anands works real well and there have been many threads about the overclockedness (sp) of rdram 16 device modules. Atacom sells them in abundance and they are readily available for the same price as PC-2100. Almost all OC the 1.6a w/rdram to 2.1+...many to 2.4 (150fsb 16x150=2400) MEMORY @ 4X. Are you expecting to get above 150fsb with your ddr? I personally hope u spend your savings on more cooling and some crucial ddr. Anything above 2.4 ghz for the 1.6a is shady regardless of the memory u use....

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Insane3D
fkloster -

Just an FYI. Current i845D and i845G boards running DDR400 are right up there with your score. There is a guy over in the Motherboards forum getting around 3400/3400 scores on the Epox 4G4A+. I personally get a score of ~ 3100/3100 with a 150mhz FSB and the DDR @ 400mhz on my 4BDA2+. RDRAM does have a higher theoretical bandwith, but the fastest DDR is starting to get very close to matching it. I would dare to say there would be no noticeable performance difference between a 3100/3100 score and a 3300/3300 score... Just a little info...

That's what I am reading also. DDR SDRAM is more cost effective for likely higher OVERclocked performance. None of the RDRAM supporters can show me anything close to the $400 I would need to spend for my upgrade that would give likely higher performance.

ABIT TH7II INTEL 850 ATX MOTHERBOARD - RETAIL $116 @ newegg
128MB 800mhz RAMBUS Mushkin w/samsung chips X2 $ 110 @ mushkin.com
P4 1.6A - $140 at newegg
Antec PP660B - $95 at newegg

Total - $461

So you can have that for $50 more. you could probably find better deals on the motherboard and rambus also, i just threw this together. you can most likely hit 160MHz FSB with a 3x RDRAM ratio on this set up, and it will smoke the pants off the DDR.

Kramer

 

[Pabster]

SexyK wrote:

"you can most likely hit 160MHz FSB with a 3x RDRAM ratio on this set up, and it will smoke the pants off the DDR."

ROFLMAO. Who are you trying to fool? Even in synthetic benchies (@160 3X RDRAM) today's DDR bests it. And in real world performance, even when RDRAM shows an advantage (synthetically), it fails to impress. A percentage point here or there in a specific task, yes, but overall? It just isn't worth the ridiculous price premium, nor the investment in a dead horse technology. IMHO, and YMMV.

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SexyK

Finally, how do you explain the "elderly" Athlon XP DDR platform outperforming any P4 implementation clock for clock?

Hah, this arguement made sense about, oh, 9 months ago when the P4 was stuck at 1.7GHz, but you look sort of foolish today trying to claim that the AthlonXP architecture is anywhere near as flexible as the P4 architecture, Athon is old technology, there's no way around it.

Kramer

You really shouldn't be here if you're illiterate. When did I say the Athlon platform was as flexible? Please quote me so I can be enlightened.

I believe the words I used was "clock for clock." The Athlon XP 2200+ chip runs at ~1700mhz or so. Please give me an example of a P4 1700-1800mhz configuration using any memory and chipset you wish - and tell me that its faster.

LOL

 

[SteelCityFan]

People have already told you that the RDRAM is overclockable as long as you buy the right stuff.

RDRAM Mults & FSB

FSB - Mult - Ram Speed

400 - 3X - PC600
400 - 4X - PC800

533 - 3X - PC800
533 - 4X - PC1066

600 - 3X - PC900
600 - 4X - PC1200

You see, you can set the multiplier on the RAM at 3X or 4X, so even with a FSB of 150, you are running PC900 which is easily faster than DDR 333 and is probably faster than DDR400 (I have not seen numbers). The latest Samsung low density ram (16 device 256MB sticks / 8 device 128MB sticks) would be able to easily hit PC900-960 (for 160FSB).

Many motherboards (RDRAM and DDR) allow you to lock the AGP/PCI bus... So, if the Ram is going to be able to handle it (as proven over and over on this forum), and the chip can handle it, then why would you not be able to OC a Northwood on a RDRAM board? If PC800 outperforms DDR333, then what do you think PC900 would do?

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SteelCityFan

Wrong. Only the misinformed (or those AMD zealots wishing to spend every last penny) would run 333mhz memory because the speed boost is minimal and there is a nice increase in price between DDR266 and DDR333. Most people are still getting PC2100 and PC800 RDRAM so you're comparing apples to oranges. With this comparison, RDRAM is atleast twice as expensive. Couple that with a more expensive chipset and minimal performance advantages, and you end up with not a particularly enticing option for people looking for bang for the buck.

In fact, since AMD has announced that there will not be official support for Athlon CPU FSBs over 266DDR, and Intel's only supporting PC2100 on the 845DDR as well, I'd say the price descrepancy is only increasing with PC1066 on the way.

Ummm. When did I mention AMD in the sentence you quoted? Most Intel buyers are not getting PC2100.. at least not the enthusiast/performance group. PC2100 is a handycap on the memory bandwidth hungry P4.

I didn't say you did. I'm talking about SPEC - you're talking about overclocking. Its intangible to discuss enthusiast because benchmarks when you tweak everything to the max and each component has its own limitations. Plus if you're using PC2400+ you're running memory busses async with FSBs which introduces latencies.

When I was shopping for a P4 system, I was not going to cripple my computer using slow memory. I wanted the fastest. You cannot compare an outdated technology/speed with a current one when comparing prices, and then slam one for being more expensive. The older one (PC2100 in this case) will of course be cheaper. I wanted fast DDR or fast RDRAM. The fastest RDRAM was cheaper than the fastest DDR and outperformed it.

I also was not aware that Intel and Intel alone was making chipsets for the P4. The "Intel only supports PC2100 on the 845DDR" holds absolutely no water because there are obviously plenty of DDR333 and higher boards available for the P4.

Yeah, VIA makes chipsets for it... Big deal. Atleast Asus and Abit are smart enough to stay away from their POS. Then there's SIS...

You're still grasping at straws. If you want to talk about maxing out, why not mention the 140 bucks you pay for 256 megs PC1066 RDRAM as opposed to 60 for 256 megs?

 

[dexvx]

People with DDR-SDram may get approximately the same scores as RDram systems, but in real world performance (high bandwidth applications), RDram still wins out, as evident in the real world benchmarks (go look for yourself). This means that RDram is more efficient, structure wise.

Pricewise, RDram isnt much more than DDR-SDram, but the more memory you buy, the bigger the difference. I can also assure you that RDram clock of 160x3 = 480Mhz = PC960 is also sufficiently fast enough to beat out most DDR-SDram solutions.

As for overclockers, go look on VR-Zone's Pentium IV nothwood top overclockers. ALL OF THEM use RDram based platforms, none of them use the DDR-SDram platforms. Basically, RDram is for small overclockers (those that want to reach around the 133Mhz FSB, or extreme overclockers (200FSB)). DDR-SDram is for the wannabe's in the middle

Busmaster 11: Look at Lightwave 7.5 with SSE2 enhancements. Although it is an extreme circumstance, I believe the P4-1600 Northwood edges out an XP2100+ (1.73Ghz), by almost 30%.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: SexyK

Finally, how do you explain the "elderly" Athlon XP DDR platform outperforming any P4 implementation clock for clock?

Hah, this arguement made sense about, oh, 9 months ago when the P4 was stuck at 1.7GHz, but you look sort of foolish today trying to claim that the AthlonXP architecture is anywhere near as flexible as the P4 architecture, Athon is old technology, there's no way around it.

Kramer

You really shouldn't be here if you're illiterate. When did I say the Athlon platform was as flexible? Please quote me so I can be enlightened.

I believe the words I used was "clock for clock." The Athlon XP 2200+ chip runs at ~1700mhz or so. Please give me an example of a P4 1700-1800mhz configuration using any memory and chipset you wish - and tell me that its faster.

LOL

my god, some people, i swear. First of all, and AthlonXP 2200+ runs at 1800MHz, I would think fanboys like you would know stuff like that. That is the fastest XP available, in case you haven't noticed. You might be right if i could only go out and buy a P4 1.8GHz, but no one cares about IPC anymore, since XP is stuck at 1.8GHz and the P4 is at 2.53GHz. Who cares clock for clock? Clock speed means nothing, remember?! The fastest Pentium 4 murders the fastest AthlonXP in nearly every benchmark, and nobody who would buy a 2200+ would have a P4 running at less than 2.2Ghz. How you can possibly think that the Athlon XP isn't "ancient technology" is beyond me. Even AMD is basically admitting it by pulling all its engineeres off the Tbred/Barton projects and using them on the Hammer project. They know the core is way past its prime, and are letting it die.

Kramer

 

[fkloster]

It (rambus) just isn't worth the ridiculous price premium...

-Pabster

What price premium?

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: SexyK

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Insane3D
fkloster -

Just an FYI. Current i845D and i845G boards running DDR400 are right up there with your score. There is a guy over in the Motherboards forum getting around 3400/3400 scores on the Epox 4G4A+. I personally get a score of ~ 3100/3100 with a 150mhz FSB and the DDR @ 400mhz on my 4BDA2+. RDRAM does have a higher theoretical bandwith, but the fastest DDR is starting to get very close to matching it. I would dare to say there would be no noticeable performance difference between a 3100/3100 score and a 3300/3300 score... Just a little info...

That's what I am reading also. DDR SDRAM is more cost effective for likely higher OVERclocked performance. None of the RDRAM supporters can show me anything close to the $400 I would need to spend for my upgrade that would give likely higher performance.

ABIT TH7II INTEL 850 ATX MOTHERBOARD - RETAIL $116 @ newegg
128MB 800mhz RAMBUS Mushkin w/samsung chips X2 $ 110 @ mushkin.com
P4 1.6A - $140 at newegg
Antec PP660B - $95 at newegg

Total - $461

So you can have that for $50 more. you could probably find better deals on the motherboard and rambus also, i just threw this together. you can most likely hit 160MHz FSB with a 3x RDRAM ratio on this set up, and it will smoke the pants off the DDR.

Kramer

Thanks . . . phew, finally something more concrete to consider.

People have already told you that the RDRAM is overclockable as long as you buy the right stuff.

Thanks, but I was looking for examples - as above.

I am getting a P-4 system and and am deciding between RD RAM and DDR SDRAM. I have no "moral" objections to RD RAM - I am just looking for best bang for the buck and am weighing all the advice carefully.

Excuse my persistance and I do appreciate your replies.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: fkloster

It (rambus) just isn't worth the ridiculous price premium...

-Pabster

What price premium?

Also, what dead horse technology? Did you read this whole thread? Intel itself has stated that they have no intention of stopping rambus support. If anything DDR is dead horse, as it probably will take DDR-II to crack DDR400 speeds.

Kramer

 

[SteelCityFan]

Ummm. When did I mention AMD in the sentence you quoted? Most Intel buyers are not getting PC2100.. at least not the enthusiast/performance group. PC2100 is a handycap on the memory bandwidth hungry P4.

I didn't say you did. I'm talking about SPEC - you're talking about overclocking. Its intangible to discuss enthusiast because benchmarks when you tweak everything to the max and each component has its own limitations. Plus if you're using PC2400+ you're running memory busses async with FSBs which introduces latencies.

Hmmm. I don't recall speaking of overclocking in the comments you are replying too. You are comparing PC2100 to PC800 and not PC2700, and then saying RDRAM is twice as expensive as DDR. Duh! Of course an older PC2100 will be cheaper, but such a slow technology really limits the P4. There are large gains seen when going from PC2100 to PC2700 on a motherboard that supports it. With AMD the speed increase in tinty because the FSB can't go as fast as the ram, but not with the P4. If you compare the latest DDR with the latest RDRAM at the time I bought my PC, the RDRAM was cheaper. Why in the hell would I want to compare it to PC2100 which would severely slow my P4 system down? SDRAM was cheap since I already had that.. maybe I should have used that.

Yeah, VIA makes chipsets for it... Big deal. Atleast Asus and Abit are smart enough to stay away from their POS. Then there's SIS...

You're still grasping at straws. If you want to talk about maxing out, why not mention the 140 bucks you pay for 256 megs PC1066 RDRAM as opposed to 60 for 256 megs?

I paid 140 bucks for 512 megs of RDRAM... not 256. And again. You are comparing PC800 to old slow PC2100. I could have PC133 for less too, but that would have been dumb... just like buying PC2100 when you are looking to use the fastest available memory. Why buy a motherboard that can use DDR333 and put PC2100 in it when higher speed ram has been proven to show large gains when used with the P4.

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SexyK

Intel will soon relegate RDRAM to nothing more than a niche market, and possibly not even in server roles.

Well, RDRAM was never designed to be used in servers, so thats a non-argument, and as far as the "niche market", i could refer you to many articles, but Ill just quote HardOCP:

Really? Tell me what the i840 chipset was for?

Our friends at Anandtech reported yesterday that Mr. Siu had stated that the current i850E would be the last chipset supporting RDRAM, although upon writing this it seems that the statement has been removed from their website. explained to us that he had been misquoted. While he would not go into detail, he gave the impression that Intel would continue to support RDRAM in the future. So it seems as though we'll certainly see RDRAM and DDR RAM both stay strong in Intel's current marketing strategies.

So, looks like Intel is sticking with RAMBUS.

You'll have to provide a link to your quote. Seems like its taken out of context with little indication of just *how much* Intel wants to stick with Rambust.

Meanwhile the featured article at the OCP had a showdown between 266 and 333DDR, PC800 and 1066 RDRAM. In all real world tests the 333DDR and the 1066 were separated by _very_ negligible margins. Impossible to discern when running such apps, and as my contention all along, not worth the price difference.

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SexyKmy god, some people, i swear. First of all, and AthlonXP 2200+ runs at 1800MHz, I would think fanboys like you would know stuff like that. That is the fastest XP available, in case you haven't noticed. You might be right if i could only go out and buy a P4 1.8GHz, but no one cares about IPC anymore, since XP is stuck at 1.8GHz and the P4 is at 2.53GHz. Who cares clock for clock? Clock speed means nothing, remember?! The fastest Pentium 4 murders the fastest AthlonXP in nearly every benchmark, and nobody who would buy a 2200+ would have a P4 running at less than 2.2Ghz. How you can possibly think that the Athlon XP isn't "ancient technology" is beyond me. Even AMD is basically admitting it by pulling all its engineeres off the Tbred/Barton projects and using them on the Hammer project. They know the core is way past its prime, and are letting it die.

Kramer

Clock speed is an indication of an intelligent and efficient design, as opposed to "okay... die shrink and raise clock speed!" And judging by your comments, I guess I can forgive you for misreading my message earlier and reading what you wanted it to read.

Yeah, if we all had an extra 800 bucks to plop down on a top of the line intel P4, RDRAM and chipset, we may well all do it. But we don't. Most people here are enthusiasts who want bang for the buck, and the P4 certainly doesn't offer that, especially when paired with RDRAM.

 

[fkloster]

Most people here are enthusiasts who want bang for the buck, and the P4 certainly doesn't offer that, especially when paired with RDRAM.

Correction, if you overclock, P4 1.6a @ 2.1+ or 2.4ghz coupled with 533mhz rdram (PC-1066) or ddr has extremely good bang for the buck.

If you don't overclock...AMD has the best value w/ddr

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SteelCityFanOf course an older PC2100 will be cheaper, but such a slow technology really limits the P4. There are large gains seen when going from PC2100 to PC2700 on a motherboard that supports it. With AMD the speed increase in tinty because the FSB can't go as fast as the ram, but not with the P4. If you compare the latest DDR with the latest RDRAM at the time I bought my PC, the RDRAM was cheaper. Why in the hell would I want to compare it to PC2100 which would severely slow my P4 system down? SDRAM was cheap since I already had that.. maybe I should have used that.

PC2700 is still 50/90 for a 256/512 meg module at pricewatch. PC800 is 90/170 or so. Again, PC1066 is 140 for _256_ megs. That combined with the increase in cost of a P4 cpu and chipset, and we're not even talking about machines in the same price category anymore. However, according to Hardocp, we're still talking about machines that perform similiarly... (P4 on 333 vs P4 on 1066.)

 

[SteelCityFan]

Clock speed is an indication of an intelligent and efficient design, as opposed to "okay... die shrink and raise clock speed!" And judging by your comments, I guess I can forgive you for misreading my message earlier and reading what you wanted it to read.

If it is so much more "intelligent" than Intel's design, then why is the Intel CPU faster? Seems to me their design is pretty smart, it enabled them to re-take the performance crown, and the P4 shows no sign of slowing down or reaching the limits of it's architecture. Just because it does not do as much per clock cylce does not make it less intelligent of a design. The name of the game is performance. Who cares if a company gets there by high IPC or high clock.

You pay a premium for the fastest, and Intel is the fastest. If you want a slower PC because the fastest is too much money, go Athlon or a slower speed P4.

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: SexyKmy god, some people, i swear. First of all, and AthlonXP 2200+ runs at 1800MHz, I would think fanboys like you would know stuff like that. That is the fastest XP available, in case you haven't noticed. You might be right if i could only go out and buy a P4 1.8GHz, but no one cares about IPC anymore, since XP is stuck at 1.8GHz and the P4 is at 2.53GHz. Who cares clock for clock? Clock speed means nothing, remember?! The fastest Pentium 4 murders the fastest AthlonXP in nearly every benchmark, and nobody who would buy a 2200+ would have a P4 running at less than 2.2Ghz. How you can possibly think that the Athlon XP isn't "ancient technology" is beyond me. Even AMD is basically admitting it by pulling all its engineeres off the Tbred/Barton projects and using them on the Hammer project. They know the core is way past its prime, and are letting it die.

Kramer

Clock speed is an indication of an intelligent and efficient design, as opposed to "okay... die shrink and raise clock speed!" And judging by your comments, I guess I can forgive you for misreading my message earlier and reading what you wanted it to read.

Yeah, if we all had an extra 800 bucks to plop down on a top of the line intel P4, RDRAM and chipset, we may well all do it. But we don't. Most people here are enthusiasts who want bang for the buck, and the P4 certainly doesn't offer that, especially when paired with RDRAM.

well,in reguard to youre desire to spend less than $800 for a top performing chip, I was going to point you in the direction of a $140 1.6A @ 2.133 or 2.4GHz, but fkloster already beat me to it. And you think that intel is bad for enthusiasts on a tight budget, okay.

Anyway, I also beg to differ on the "intelligent and efficient design" point. I think any intelligent Anandtech user could see that the fact that the P4 will be able to run at 3GHz+ on a .13u process is a fairly "efficient" and "intelligent" design. It isn't worse engineering just because it takes a different approach. AMD would love to have a chip that could scale to 10GHz in the freseeable future, but it looks like they are having trouble breaking the 1GHz mark with the Hammers right now on the same process Intel is getting 2.53GHz (many OC's to 3GHz+ TODAY!) with. So while AMD is bumping their "superior" architecture 66MHz at a time, Intel will continue to roll out chips will 100-200MHz jumps and pull away from AMD. We'll see what hammer brings to the table. but to call the athlon more "intelligent" than the P4 design is pretty stupid, IMO.

Kramer

 

[SteelCityFan]

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: SteelCityFanOf course an older PC2100 will be cheaper, but such a slow technology really limits the P4. There are large gains seen when going from PC2100 to PC2700 on a motherboard that supports it. With AMD the speed increase in tinty because the FSB can't go as fast as the ram, but not with the P4. If you compare the latest DDR with the latest RDRAM at the time I bought my PC, the RDRAM was cheaper. Why in the hell would I want to compare it to PC2100 which would severely slow my P4 system down? SDRAM was cheap since I already had that.. maybe I should have used that.

PC2700 is still 50/90 for a 256/512 meg module at pricewatch. PC800 is 90/170 or so. Again, PC1066 is 140 for _256_ megs. That combined with the increase in cost of a P4 cpu and chipset, and we're not even talking about machines in the same price category anymore. However, according to Hardocp, we're still talking about machines that perform similiarly... (P4 on 333 vs P4 on 1066.)

I love how you distort the truth. You run to pricewatch to quote the cheapest PC2700 price, then conveniently add about $15 to the lowest RDRAM price you find.

I paid $72 per 256MB stick, not $90. At the time I bought mine, name brand DDR333 CL2.5 was about $90 per 256MB stick.

PC1066 is going to cost more since it is a lot faster than DDR333... and it is very new to the market. If you want faster Ram, you pay more money. Why is this surprising to you?

I am not too sure I would trust anything regarding RDRAM from the HardOCP website. This is afterall the same site that refused to review any board using RDRAM because of the owner's opinion of the company. Go ahead, read their forums.. search for people asking why there are (until now) no reviews dealing with RDRAM. Look over their past Motherboard reviews. Note the absolute absence of RDRAM based motherboards. Also note the childish behavior displayed in their forums. Posting a link to Tom's Hardware shows up as XXX.XXX.XXX when you click it, and posting direct to the IP will get you banned... Even long time excellant contributers to the board. Hard OCP has as much of a bias against RDRAM as MSN has against the republican party.


EDIT: OMG, look at the first paragraph of their article...

"There has been some huge controversy surrounding Rambus, the company that developed RDRAM. We've never been a Rambus fan, and most of the time we haven't even been fans of RDRAM; "

You expect them now to all of the sudden be objective? Too funny.

 

[SexyK]

For the record, here is the article i pulled the quote from:

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzAz

Kramer

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SexyK
Anyway, I also beg to differ on the "intelligent and efficient design" point. I think any intelligent Anandtech user could see that the fact that the P4 will be able to run at 3GHz+ on a .13u process is a fairly "efficient" and "intelligent" design. It isn't worse engineering just because it takes a different approach. AMD would love to have a chip that could scale to 10GHz in the freseeable future, but it looks like they are having trouble breaking the 1GHz mark with the Hammers right now on the same process Intel is getting 2.53GHz (many OC's to 3GHz+ TODAY!) with. So while AMD is bumping their "superior" architecture 66MHz at a time, Intel will continue to roll out chips will 100-200MHz jumps and pull away from AMD. We'll see what hammer brings to the table. but to call the athlon more "intelligent" than the P4 design is pretty stupid, IMO.
Kramer

You're comparing pre-production 64 bit Hammer clock speeds right now with the latest P4? Exactly whose intelligence are we supposed to be judging?
:disgust:

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: SteelCityFan

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: SteelCityFanOf course an older PC2100 will be cheaper, but such a slow technology really limits the P4. There are large gains seen when going from PC2100 to PC2700 on a motherboard that supports it. With AMD the speed increase in tinty because the FSB can't go as fast as the ram, but not with the P4. If you compare the latest DDR with the latest RDRAM at the time I bought my PC, the RDRAM was cheaper. Why in the hell would I want to compare it to PC2100 which would severely slow my P4 system down? SDRAM was cheap since I already had that.. maybe I should have used that.

PC2700 is still 50/90 for a 256/512 meg module at pricewatch. PC800 is 90/170 or so. Again, PC1066 is 140 for _256_ megs. That combined with the increase in cost of a P4 cpu and chipset, and we're not even talking about machines in the same price category anymore. However, according to Hardocp, we're still talking about machines that perform similiarly... (P4 on 333 vs P4 on 1066.)

I love how you distort the truth. You run to pricewatch to quote the cheapest PC2700 price, then conveniently add about $15 to the lowest RDRAM price you find.

I paid $72 per 256MB stick, not $90. At the time I bought mine, name brand DDR333 CL2.5 was about $90 per 256MB stick.

PC1066 is going to cost more since it is a lot faster than DDR333... and it is very new to the market. If you want faster Ram, you pay more money. Why is this surprising to you?

I pretty much eliminated the lowest price entry and quoted a more or less average of the next three, and you'll find my numbers to be consistent with that, unless someone's offering something for 10$ less than average but charging 10$ more for shipping. Either way nothing has been distorted so much that you can't see the difference.

Despite the price increase in ram the last six months or so, I don't think I can remember a time in recent memory where 256 megs DDR cost as much as 90... I don't know where you made your purcahses from, but they certainly look skewed.

And unless you show me real world benchies that prove otherwise, dismissing HardOCP's claim that 1066 barely outperforms 333DDR doesn't do you much good.

 

[SteelCityFan]

Despite the price increase in ram the last six months or so, I don't think I can remember a time in recent memory where 256 megs DDR cost as much as 90... I don't know where you made your purcahses from, but they certainly look skewed.

And unless you show me real world benchies that prove otherwise, dismissing HardOCP's claim that 1066 barely outperforms 333DDR doesn't do you much good.

When I buying parts for my new system, name brand DDR was around $85-90 per 256MB and name brand RDRAM was $70 per 256MB.

I also find it amusing that they (HardOCP) only benchmarked games using 640x480 which does not take much memory bandwidth. Of course they cover this by saying that they don't want the Video card affecting the results. However, since they are using the same card on each system, their statement defies logic, and is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.

 

[josphII]

Originally posted by: busmaster11
I've noticed that AMD has generally preferred the more conservative route. While Intel goes for brute force architectures that enable higher clock speed, ie P4 / RDRAM, AMD has gone for more intelligent, yet evolutionary designs.

All things being equal, increasing performance through higher clock speeds will generate instability more often than increasing performnce by making a more intelligent chip, which is what AMD has done. While DDR and QDR, if and when it arrives, will always be able to trace its roots back to SDRAM, RDRAM is more revolutionary. But its key negative, that it does so little per clock cycle, bugs me. That plus the fact that its been years since its introduction, and its prices are still double that of DDR.

Intel has seen it, and its no coincidence that they immediately surfaced with i845DDR immediately after their contract with rambust expired.

I hope the bastards at rambust are forced to pay back every penny they conned out of the Jedec organizations.

this is the dumbest thing ive heard all day.

 

[Pabster]

fkloster wrote:

"Pabster

What price premium?"

Let's take a quick looky-see at PriceWatch this evening.

128MB Samsung PC1066 (no ns listing) - $61 (plus 7 or 8 to ship)
256MB Samsung PC2700 - $47 (with shipping)

I see a price premium. In addition, I'm willing to bet those Samsung PC1066 modules are really just rebadged PC800. Don't plan on clocking too high with 'em. Good PC1066 is demanding even more. The cheapest Kingston Non-ECC 32ns PC1066 (128MB) are at $69 plus shipping.

Am I missing something? Perhaps you meant PC800 modules instead? In that case, they're about equal. But we both know PC800 doesn't stand a chance against today's fast DDR setups. Even in synthetic benchies. So let's look at it realistically (for me, price vs performance).