Second-Gen DDR SDRAM On The Horizon

cplcap writes "This story in The Register picks up on Samsung's new DDR-II Chips, pushing DDR's speed up to 533 Mb/s and a 4.2GB/s memory bus. Prototype 512MB DIMMs are being produced, and IBM has developed a chipset to take advantage of the speed. There's a little more meat in Samsung's official press release."

Comments

Clever Marketing Scheme

[goldspider]

How many people besides myself have noticed that there are hardly any backward-compatible hardware technology breakthroughs?

I understand that there are physical limitations well beyond my comprehension that are factors in all of this, but it seems that any time one of these improvements comes out, be it RAM or CPUs or any number of other upgrades, a new chipset has to be developed to support it?

I'll tell you why: because marketers understand that some people (many of which frequent this site) will pay plenty extra to have the latest technology, no matter what.

I, for one, am sick of it. For once I'd like to be able to upgrade my CPU or RAM without having to buy a new motherboard and re-install my entire OS.

Sorry for the rant, but I think the fact that every incremental hardware update requires a new chipset is noteworthy.

Re:Clever Marketing Scheme

[Yet Another Smith]

Simple. Next time you put together a computer, buy a chipset for DDR-II, but only put pc2100 memory in. Then, six months later, buy screaming fast DDR-II memory. Sure it'll cost you more in the long run, but you'll have upgraded your RAM successfully. Or you could do like everybody else and buy more RAM rather than faster to make your upgrade.

Of course, if you had one of the early AMD t-bird chips, you could buy an XP and run it on the same motherboard, so CPUs generally are upgradeable within the same form-factor. Same is true for a Duron to XP upgrade.

If you're having tp re-install your OS for a CPU or RAM upgrade, you've got bigger problems.

Re:Clever Marketing Scheme

[Tackhead]

> My point was that every time I've upgraded my CPU or RAM, I've had to buy a new motherboard as well. Hence the OS re-install.

Depends on the upgrade.

As a lark, when I moved from a Pentium I (430TX chipset) to the 440BX-based system (new mobo, Celeron CPU, new chipset, new video card, new sound card, new RAM), I tried transferring (after Ghosting :) a Win9x system to it. After several reboots and requests for the install CD, it actually ran.

(Then, of course, I wiped it and reinstalled from scratch to be sure I had a decent config and drivers, but it's theoretically possible. I was amazed it worked at all.)

That said, I chose the 440BX because it had headroom for growth. That lowly Celeron-366 (66 FSB oc'ed to 100 for 550 MHz) is now running a Celeron 800 at over 1 GHz (FSB at 124.) It could probably run at an FSB of 133, except that I've got mismatched sticks of PC133.

Am I getting as much out of that PIII-1G on a 440BX chipset as I could? Of course not. My 5400 RPM drives are still running ATA-66. It's still SDRAM. It's still the same PCI frequency.

But the upgrade was $50 for the CPU, gave me another two years out of the system, and (most importantly) required no time-consuming OS or driver changes, be it Win9x, 2000, or Linux.

I think we might be at a similar point with the P4 Northwoods. Buy a cheap Northwood 1.6A now, and a mobo with a chipset (SiS 645DX or Via P4X333) with some FSB headroom. Throw some fast DDR-I into it.

Two years down the road, I think you'll probably be able to plunk in another "$50 CPU and $20 stick of RAM" behind the OS's back, giving you decent performance for another year.

There are no guarantees, of course, but by paying a $50 premium for quality parts today, you can often get better than 50/50 odds of saving $500+ two years from now. That's a good risk, IMNSHO.

fucking marketting!

[Cyno]

Gah! I fucking hate marketting! Why can't they just call it QDR, because that's what it is. Quad Data Rate fucking DIMMs. God damn it, motherfucking, sun of a bitch!