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Intel To Drop RAMBUS In Favor of DDR RAM
El Pollo Loco writes: "Anandtech has this news article. Basically, Intel has decided to drop expensive rambus memory and instead to go with cheaper DDR memory."
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This is a bit of a shock, really. RDRAM *is* a half decent solution for some high end boxes. That article from the windbags over at Tom's Hardware showed (kinda) sucessfully that there is a great deal of potential in RDRAM. I am an AMD / DDR user, but I have to admit that the P4 with a 133x4 bus is damn nice.
tinfoilmedia
The change is actually restricted to four tiny little Intel products .. all desktops, workstations, servers and notebooks.
Read the article carefully. The change is on 1 product line only.
I didn't see any references here, so here it is:
http://www.ebnews.com/story/OEG20020226S0040
- Mike
Ah, from the mouths of babes (cowards)...
if you check pricewatch RDRAM and DDR have almost identical costs. if someone is charging more for RDRAM then they are just lagging behind the market...
If you just read the headline above and the linked *clipping* of a story, you'd think Intel is dropping RAMBUS completely. That is not the case. Here's the original story that the clipping came from. Intel is dropping *exclusive* support for RDRAM. Here's a relevant quote:
/. earlier this week.
Also, although not new products, the next iterations of its 850 and 860 chipsets, supporting a 533MHz front-side, will support RDRAM when they arrive, probably in the second half of this year.
This ties in perfectly with Tom's Hardware review of a new, pre-release 533MHz RDRAM chipset and the Anandtech review of the new Intel DDR-based chipset linked to by
Intels decision to drop rambus in favour of DDR, DDRII, and dual channel versions of it isn't because of the desktop market at all. Which is what is misleading here.
Intel has always known that RAMBUS is not the best thing for servers, since servers need large amounts of memory. The serial configuration RAMBUS must be put it, along with its higher latency, leads to poor performance when in large amounts. This isn't acceptable, and doesn't happen with DDR, its the primary reason they are switching.
That and RAMBUS runs hotter then the P4 CPUs
Rambus was just starting to become affordable (on par with DDR), there are a ton of new benchmarks showing that in several applications, the P4 at high clock speeds actually benefits tremendously from Rambus. Just when it actually starts to look good, they decide to drop it?
Check out:
Tom's Hardware
"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform. In the mass market, the 845 chipset dominates by nearly 100% - and this will remain the case for the next six months. But only 533 MHz RDRAM enables the processor to attain high performance. Eventually, the dual-channel DDR solution will receive some sort of technological boost, however there's still no sign of development in this area."
I guess there's only one thing left to say: GO AMD!!!
-- Adam
Note, first of all, that it is in fact quite true that Intel is (planning on) dropping all new RDRAM-based designs from their x86 chipset lineup soon. The last "new" RDRAM chipset Intel releases will be the upcoming 850E, which is just the 850 but speed bumped to work with the upcoming 533MHz FSB P4s (due in April), and to match them with PC1066 RDRAM. Of course, this is very old news, known from Intel roapmaps obtained by everyone and their mom back in October or November.
But that's not what the article says. It's talking only about chipsets for servers and workstations, where, indeed, the 860 is being replaced by the just introducted dual-channel DDR E-7500 (Plumas) and the upcoming dual-channel DDR Placer (as well as a just-introduced chipset from Broadcom), and where the 850 will be replaced by the dual-channel DDR Granite Bay chipset, due in Q3 or so.
Thing is, dual-channel DDR for the *desktop* won't arrive from Intel until sometime in 2003, with the Springdale chipset. (Dual-channel DDRII, in fact.) VIA and SiS are both trying to get their dual-channel DDR chipsets out in time for the 533 FSB P4s (doubtful, but they should be in full swing by Q3), but, again, if you want the very highest-performing P4 desktop, and you want an Intel chipset, you'll either need to ridiculously overpay for a Granite Bay (workstation oriented) motherboard, or you'll have to use the 850E with PC1066 RDRAM, or you'll have to wait until Springdale in 2003.
So, to reiterate:
1) Yes, RDRAM is gone from all future Intel chipset introductions save the 850E, which is just a speed bump, not a new chipset.
2) But that's not what this article is talking about; it's only talking about servers and workstations.
3) RDRAM won't be completely gone until there is a dual-channel DDR chipset to replace it on the desktop; soon from VIA and SiS, not until 2003 from Intel.
I've never run into speed or compatiblity issues with Rambus; I can not say the same for DDR memory.
I can't tell you how many chipsets i've dealt with in the past year that had issues with filling all the memory sockets; general timing and compatibility issues....damn....via even has speed issues regarding filling all the dimm sockets with ram on some of their chipsets! That's rediculous.
How many Rambus issues have I had? Let's see....NONE.
Granted, Rambus was expensive, but has anyone looked at DDR vs. Rambus lately? The pricing is almost equal.
Hopefully Intel will release STABLE chipsets and possibly force DDR technology to be as cross-compatible as Rambus.
-ted
As the Register points out in their discussion of the story, this change only applies to the Placer and Granite Bay chipsets being developed for single- or dual-processor Xeon workstations. The existing RDRAM-based chipsets (the 850 and 860) will be refreshed with support for the 533MHz FSB but will otherwise remain unchanged.