Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

An Overview of Quad Band Memory

Posted by chrisd on from the via-and-intel-ain't-pals dept.

tedgyz writes "AnandTech has a short article on a new memory technology from Via, called Quad Band Memory (QBM). Rather than using dual-channel DDR to increase bandwidth, they use phase-shifting inside the memory modules to accomplish the same goal. The end result is simpler (and presumably cheaper) motherboard designs that are backwards compatible with current DDR modules. The downside? It is currently only going to available in a P4 chipset that Intel has not authorized."

2 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. FAQ about QBM by kyoko21 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a link to kentron's FAQ about Quad Band Memory.

  2. Re:But memory isn't the bottleneck anymore, is it? by Jimmy_B · · Score: 4, Informative
    Nowadays, you see all of these benchmarks on chips/chipsets/memory, and unless you're talking inSANE resolutions and color depths, AMD/Intel vs nVidia/ATI really doesn't matter much. It's just personal preference.
    Resolutions and color depths have nothing to do with the chips/chipsets/memory; the component most affected by that is the video card. And if you think video cards are fast enough that choosing between nVidia and ATI is just personal preference, odds are you aren't doing anything which deserves more than an old 4-meg video card.
    It was my understanding that the major bottleneck of any system is the DISK. So no matter how fast your ram is, if you still have to swap to the slow-ass disk, your system will be slow.
    While starting up programs, yes, the disk is the bottleneck as files are loaded the first time. But for the tasks where speed *really* matters - compiling programs, long simulations, games - the speed of CPU and RAM are critical. (Disk can be made important if RAM is lacking in quantity, but with RAM prices as they are these days, that is inexcusable.)