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DDR3 RAM Explained
Das Capitolin sends us to Benchmark Reviews for an in-depth feature on DDR3 memory that begins: "These are uncertain financial times we live in today, and the rise and fall of our economy has had [a] direct [effect] on consumer spending. It has already been one full year now that DDR3 has been patiently waiting for the enthusiast community to give it proper consideration, yet [its] success is still undermined by misconceptions and high price. Benchmark Reviews has been testing DDR3 more actively than anyone. ... Sadly, it might take an article like this to open the eyes of my fellow hardware enthusiast[s] and overclocker[s], because it seems like DDR3 is the technology nobody wants [badly] enough to learn about. Pity, because overclocking is what it's all about."
DDR3 is still 5-10 times the cost of DDR2, and the performance gain is not big (maybe 10% at best) on overall system performance.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Actually, with the current technology, such as 900 MHZ CPUs, 1 gig of RAM and Linux, things are selling. I am referring to the eeePC along with the other UMPCs that are growing in use. The slowing US economy has made computer makers adapt to lower spending incomes or face lower sales. Other computers such as the gPC reflect this. Along with the growing use of Linux (which is free) helps make the computers cheaper so they sell better. MS has been failing lately due to Vista's high-priced hardware need, compare that to Linux which can run on a Pentium II or III. New technology doesn't sell well in this economy, cheap, older technology does.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I came here to say the same thing. The whole article can only be called a theoretical comparison between DDR2 & DDR3, as there is not a single benchmark that compares the two. Where is the latency, bandwidth, power consumption, etc charts for DDR2 & DDR3 when running at similar clock speeds? The author says that people are taking the latency increase too seriously, and that it doesn't come into play, but then under the "downside" discussion, they mention the latency. Also, when all the arguments they use preface concepts with "in theory" or "should" kinda makes you think they're just making this stuff up. I'm still waiting for an AM2+ chipset that will support DDR3, as the Phenoms (I think) have a memory controller that supports it. That should give the AMD chips a boost when compared to the current crop of Intel chips as the on-chip memory controller should allow for better usage of the RAM, but again, I'll wait until a benchmark confirms it. Intel motherboards, at least to me, seem to be 2-3x as costly as AMD varieties, and don't always offer the same BIOS flexibility. Not to mention the top-end Intel chips are 2x as much as the top-end AMD chips, and I still prefer AMD over Intel when building my own systems.
today is spelling optional day.
Hard disk speed, until SSDs become very common this is one of the causes of decreased speed because a HD can only run so fast
And the actual reason memory manufacturers have such a hard time selling memory performance is an extension of this; most purchases of memory have an implicit tradeoff: amount versus speed.
In most cases the real memory pain will come when you hit swap. That means you will almost always notice having less memory more than you'll notice having slower memory. So basically the only ones who end up having 'fast memory' on their system purchase checklist is those for whom money isn't an issue at all (ie, there is nothing else you could buy for that money that would improve your system (or life) more than faster memory). Or those who have very small applications they need to execute blazingly fast. Such as benchmarks.
Until those problems get fixed, faster RAM won't make a bit of difference to the end-user.
More accurately, faster RAM will make less of a difference than more RAM.
Hardware hack, smart guy.
I think I'm being trolled.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
While there's some of that, there's also the fact that the silicon itself wasn't fabricated at a certain speed. Once cut up, it's evaluated for the speed. If the silicon was capable of performing at higher speeds, but the market is only paying for lower ones, guess what do the cpu makers do?
Yes, mark it at a lower speed, and sell it as such.
Why do you think they "lock" things?
I wouldn't call it a success, either. I'd wager that figure is 90%+ copies that came with new PCs. The large majority of which probably end up in a corporate setting where it was re-imaged with XP Pro (happens all the time where I work and for our clients).
Actually you can address your additional memory using PAE though I'm not necessarily recommending you do this. I use a 64-bit Linux install and seem to be doing okay. I have had a few FLASH problems, but only an odd non-start on YouTube pages, fixed by hitting reload. It honestly doesn't bother me and has never happened during the playing of a FLASH movie, only on starting one. I expect this to be fixed soon enough and I'm much happier running the 64-bit version. Personally, I'd install the 64-bit version.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.