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Is DDR Worth It?
Wing asks: "I'm about to build a new box and I was looking at all the different things I could do to make it faster, better, etc. What I was wondering was, is it worth the extra money to invest in a DDR capable motherboard and RAM? Is there that big of a speed difference or should I stick with the same old SDRAM?"
I've been heavily researching this issue, lately, going from hardware site to hardware site. A summary of what I have found is as follows:
A 133mhz front side bus is significantly better than a 100mhz front side bus.
There is almost no performance difference between CAS 2.5 and CAS 2 memory.
On the Athlon, the choice between DDR and SDR RAM makes little difference in terms of performance, except in unusual circumstances.
In order to better answer the question, we have to know what you're doing with the machine.
For example, will you be playing one of the first person shooters where the graphics card is traditionally the bottleneck? If so, your answer is obvious -- don't DDR. But if you're playing some of the others where memory transfer rates are important, and performance in that game is important to you, the DDR is a good bet.
For a "general task" computer running Windows, SDR is fine. BTW, none of the benchmarks I've seen consider how a Linux OS would respond. Interesting, no?
Double Data Rate SDRAM. Instead of transferring data on only the positive edge of the clock cycle, DDR transfers data on both edges, doubling the theoretical data transfer rate. There also isn't much extra that has to be done to make DDR; only a little extra support circuitry is required, and for that the bandwidth doubles. It's been used in nVidia's GeForce series since the GeForce1, and it helps a lot when high resolution and high colour depth are being used.