DDR3 Price Premium Over DDR2 to Shrink to 10% This Year

[malware]

According to DigiTimes, Intel's aggressive DDR3 strategy and DRAM makers approval of what's going on may result in a less than 10% price gap between DDR3 and DDR2 in the second half of 2008. Some DRAM makers believe that DDR3 will grow its role more obviously in 2008, after seeing DDR2 remain the mainstream memory standard for several years. The relatively high price premium of DDR3 over DDR2 so far has however discouraged PC OEMs to migrate. The price gap should shrink more noticeably this year, due to the aggressive push by Intel. The DRAM makers expect some PC vendors will be subsidized by Intel to migrate to DDR3-based platforms, and this should help encourage the entire industry to migrate accordingly. Some PC vendors will also introduce DDR3-based only systems in the second half of the year. As DRAM makers are expected to speed up their pace over DDR3 production, the price premium between the two standards is expected to shrink to 10% in the second half of the year.

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[Wile E]

Well, then I might move to DDR3 at the end of the year. lol.

 

[Judas]

This is always good news

 

[Weer]

DDR3 is still completely usuless.

If a motherboard can't get to 650Mhz FSB, DDR3 is not needed.

And since Quads are all that matter now'adays, 500Mhz is where we're at, and DDR2-1066 is still too fast.

 

[Lazzer408]

I'd love to see ddr-2 800 at 2-2-2-6

 

[Wile E]

DDR3 is still completely usuless.

If a motherboard can't get to 650Mhz FSB, DDR3 is not needed.

And since Quads are all that matter now'adays, 500Mhz is where we're at, and DDR2-1066 is still too fast.

My DDR2-1200 begs to differ. Just because the ram ratio isn't 1:1, doesn't mean there isn't a gain by going to a higher ram speed. Many people in this forum have proven that running the ram on a multi is beneficial, if your ram can handle it.

 

[Grings]

With my dogshit e4400, which is scared of high fsb's, i'd have to agree

 

[Homeless]

Sounds good to me, although DDR3 is pretty useless atm as it's not faster.

 

[Morgoth]

good to hear cant wait for 3x2gb modules

 

[ChillyMyst]

oh joy, so you can get ddr3 that has higher latancys then ddr2 but runs at higher clocks, clocks nobody currently needs.......

the main advantage of ddr3 was sposta be lower volts and higher clocks if you read the jdec specs, ddr2 is already reading into that market.........i give it at least another 2 years b4 ddr3 gets into where ddr2, even intel stoped the hard push to get ddr3 out to market after they dumped the p4/p-d netburst cores and didnt need to push for as much bandwith as possable to feed those unholly peices of crap.......

 

[mk_ln]

the 10% price difference could also mean that DDR2 prices would be on the rise, closing in on DDR3 prices...which would definitely NOT be a good idea.

 

[ChillyMyst]

buy your kickass ddr2 kits cheap now, honestly i dont see high grade ddr2 kits getting cheaper then they are now, 2gb adata ddr2 800 cas4 kits for 40bucks!!!!(they can do 1200 range overclocked!!!) cant beet that imho.

 

[Hitsugaya_Toushirou]

This news will be good for amd users with the HyperTransport and anyone planning on buying a Nehalem Intel CPU, which will feature intel's first point to point connection, 'QuickPath', tested to give bandwidths between 24-32GB/s and with such high bandwidths to be available this year there is no wonder why intel wants ddr3 to sell since even DDR3-2133 only has a theoretical bandwidth of 17.066GB/s so intel will probably want DDR4 out soon as well so it actually uses the full bandwidth of QuickPath.

The only negative about DDR3 will be the higher latencies but hopefully by the end of 2008 or start of 2009 we'll have CL6,5,4 since at the moment it is CL8,7,5, which is a bit high but they'll probably improve at a reasonable rate throughout this year to get it down to a reasonable latency.

 

[Hitsugaya_Toushirou]

buy your kickass ddr2 kits cheap now, honestly i dont see high grade ddr2 kits getting cheaper then they are now, 2gb adata ddr2 800 cas4 kits for 40bucks!!!!(they can do 1200 range overclocked!!!) cant beet that imho.

I wouldn't mind knowing where? Seems a bit cheap. I could accept that price if it was CL5 but
2x 1GiB DDR2-800 CL4 at $40 seems a little cheap. Unless thats the price after cashback then it might be about right.

 

[rampage]

ill keep my generic ddr2 ram.....$150 AUSTRALIAN and i got 4 gig of 1100 mhz ram.......

 

[eidairaman1]

seems DDR3 is the only way for intel to stay ahead of competition.

 

[Lazzer408]

seems DDR3 is the only way for intel to stay ahead of competition.

What competition?

 

[Wile E]

oh joy, so you can get ddr3 that has higher latancys then ddr2 but runs at higher clocks, clocks nobody currently needs.......

the main advantage of ddr3 was sposta be lower volts and higher clocks if you read the jdec specs, ddr2 is already reading into that market.........i give it at least another 2 years b4 ddr3 gets into where ddr2, even intel stoped the hard push to get ddr3 out to market after they dumped the p4/p-d netburst cores and didnt need to push for as much bandwith as possable to feed those unholly peices of crap.......

The high speeds outweigh the latencies on the performance kits. It's the same relationship as DDR2 vs DDR1. If you use only jedec spec ram, yes, DDR2 can outperform a standard DDR3 kit. But a high performance DDR3 kit does exceed most high performance DDR2 kits. It's already been proven by some of the top OCers and benchers.

 

[candle_86]

My DDR2-1200 begs to differ. Just because the ram ratio isn't 1:1, doesn't mean there isn't a gain by going to a higher ram speed. Many people in this forum have proven that running the ram on a multi is beneficial, if your ram can handle it.

Agreed, CPU's benefit most from a 1:1 Ratio, so if you have a 1333mhz chip making the ram 1333 has a hug impact over DDR2 667

 

[quasar923]

so is it worth the high latencys with the high speeds in ddr3 or would it be best to get some ddr2 with lower latencys? im planning on making a new build later this summer maybe agust or september. i was ganna go ddr3 bc honestly ddr3 is a step above ddr2 as ddr2 is above ddr. which would give best performance and better OCs?

 

[candle_86]

depends on what speeds where talking really. DDR3 1600 pulls away from the best DDR2 1333 by about 3% so yes there is a gain according to reviews, and I would imagine this to be very much like DDR vs DDR2 where DDR400 offer the same preformance as DDR2 667 but DDR2 800 smokes it.

 

[Hitsugaya_Toushirou]

so is it worth the high latencys with the high speeds in ddr3 or would it be best to get some ddr2 with lower latencys? im planning on making a new build later this summer maybe agust or september. i was ganna go ddr3 bc honestly ddr3 is a step above ddr2 as ddr2 is above ddr. which would give best performance and better OCs?

What Candle_86 is about right. The increase in latency is covered up by the higher bandwidth but if you compare DDR2-1066 to DDR3-1066 then you'll notice that the DDR2 will perform better as it is since it has lower latencies and shorter clock cycles to make it smoother but you'll find that the DDR3 will overclock much more and it'll use less energy, which would make it reasonably close in performance.
Also, in candle-86's comparison it was slightly unfair to compare a very overclocked DDR2 to a non-overclocked DDR3, and show that it's a small difference, when the DDR3 will overclock much further.

 

[erocker]

DDR400 offer the same preformance as DDR2 667 but DDR2 800 smokes it.

Running mine at DDR 550 with cas 3 timings doesn't come close to being "smoked" by DDR2 800.

 

[Lazzer408]

Running mine at DDR 550 with cas 3 timings doesn't come close to being "smoked" by DDR2 800.

I'll bench my ddr-2 against you. Throw down some gb/s numbers.

 

[candle_86]

Running mine at DDR 550 with cas 3 timings doesn't come close to being "smoked" by DDR2 800.

I can promise CAS4 DDR2 800 would, and if your talking non offical DRAM speeds, yes DDR400 is the max offical standard that means we should compare you to an equvilant in DDR2 say 1066 CAS5