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."

Comments

not cost effective for the performance gain

[Indy1]

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.

Re:not cost effective for the performance gain

[halivar]

Exactly. I'm not buying a product whose only real advantage comes when you void the warranty.

Re:not cost effective for the performance gain

[aztektum]

And to take it even further, that's just the cost of memory. A quick NewEgg search for DDR3 motherboard came up with a whopping 10 boards. The cheapest are 150 for open box items. The typical price is over 300.

Re:How about a DDR2 versus DDR3 chart?

[ruiner13]

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.