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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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He been such a *whore* because he had the guts to admit that he was wrong about Rambus in the first place. He's not kissing their butt, he's just recognizing the facts : DDR just isn't good enough for Pentium 4. At these high clock rates, only Rambus delivers enough bandwidth to make the P4 happy.
And saying that Tom is accepting money is just ridiculous : he's probably the best hardwre journalist on the Net, and has no need to accept bribes from companies.
Doesn't DDR SDRAM cost about as much as RAMBUS memory?
Maybe he was right about rambus first time around, but the situation has changed since?
How about it?
You're mostly right. Most /.'ers went on an anti-Rambus rant and assumed Intel was dropping RDRAM across the entire line.
The EBN article clearly says that the new chipsets are for workstations (graphics, software engineerings, MCAD, etc.). Folks, these are machines that have at least 512MB of RAM. They are not mainstream desktops...
For now, Intel is still pushing RDRAM for mainstream desktops...
--Al
In fact, you're right. Intel showed no advantage using Rambus at first, but when the clockrates went higher and needed more bandwidth, then Intel showed why it had chosen Rambus as the leading memory technology to be paired with the P4. Right now, pairing P4 with DDR is like pairing an AthlonXP with cheap PC133 modules : it's just plain dump. You won't get the amazing performance your processor can offer. Stick to DDR for AMD since there is no Rambus support planned (I think), and Rambus for P4. They might cost a hell lot more, but if you have the money to buy a decent system with a P4, then chances are you will probably be able to afford the increased price of the memory. Never forget that the memory is the easiest way to make your computer faster. You almost never have enough RAM.
I'd never buy a P4 system without Rambus, but then, I'd never buy a P4 either because it cost just too much.
Before you accuse somebody of taking money or doing other things slimy and illegal, you should have something to back that up with. Basically what Tom has said all along is that Rambus gives you better memory bandwidth at the cost of latency. What he used to say is that the latency is unacceptable and the bandwidth wasn't needed and the price is too high. What he says now is that if you look at P4s with clock rates up above 2500Mhz they appear to need that super high bandwidth to perform at their best. And recent price increases in DDR have brought its price in line with RDRAM. Where do you see something fishy? It's the sign of integrity when somebody admits that a solution they said was bad has become better. I wish more politicians would have the guts to do so.
Keep in mind that Tom himself rarely writes the articles on the site these days. The article you linked to is credited to Frank Völkel, Bert Töpelt, and Patrick Schmid. The P4/2666 article is credited to Frank Völkel and Bert Töpelt. The Hammer preview is by Frank Völkel.
However, Tom Pabst's name is the one that's in that logo on the top of every page (similar to AnandTech's Anand Lal Shimpi), so by doing so he puts his integrity at stake with every article.
Ian
Yeah, in that article a 2666/533MHz Pentium 4 manages to outperform Athlon XP 2000+ (which actually runs at 1666/266MHz). What a great achievement! How do you think Athlon XP 2666+ would change the picture? Notice that 2000+ consistently shows very strong performance relative to 2000MHz and even 2200MHz P4.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The 2666mhz P4 manages to outperform the 16666mhz Athlon! Wow, what an engineering feat. :)
On the other hand though, Intel is really pulling away in raw clock speed. Obviously AMD wipes the floor with Intel at the same clock speed, but that fact is AMD looks to be nowhere close to getting over the 2GHZ mark.
The AMD vs. Intel debate is starting to sound a exactly like the Mac vs. PC clock speed debates, where G4s clobbered P2's and P3's at equivalant clock speeds, but the Intel chips were available at SUCH higher MHZ that the issue was moot.
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