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New DDR3 Memory Touted As Fastest In the World

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the real-speed-stick dept.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a relatively unknown Taiwanese company just rolled out what they claim is the world's fastest DDR3 memory kit. "Gingle DDR3 1800 memory module features high performance (1800MHz on P45/ 2000MHz on 790i), lower latency (8-8-8-24), and lower power consumption (1.84V~1.94V)."

62 comments

  1. Slow News Day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who cares. There's DDR5 out already...

    1. Re:Slow News Day? by Hairy+Heron · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's GDDR5, not DDR5. There's a big difference.

    2. Re:Slow News Day? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

      So... does that stand for "GDDR Double Data Rate"?

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re:Slow News Day? by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

      Who cares. There's DDR5 out already...

      Is there any difference in the dancing pads? Oh, wait...

    4. Re:Slow News Day? by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 2, Informative

      The "G" is "Graphics".
      It's wide-bus RAM that specialises in long sequential reads/writes. It's not as random-access as most other RAM.

  2. Wahey by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  3. Reliability? by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who cares if it's fast? I want RAM that is reliable first, fast second. I'll be damned if I ever buy overpriced junk that claims to have amazing times, next to no delay, etc. if at the end of the day it fails to read the data sent to it back correctly my kernel crashes in spectacular ways.

    --

    ---
    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    1. Re:Reliability? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're silly. RAM today doesn't fail unless it's broken. ECC is pointless. When did you ever have a working stick of non-ECC RAM that crashed on you? Exactly; never.

    2. Re:Reliability? by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 1

      You wouldn't know unless you tested it. Bit flip errors are most likely to do nothing really noticeable, but that could be a pretty big deal. You're inexperienced.

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
  4. Just in... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    New processor touted as fastest in the world!

  5. Just what I need... by Carbon016 · · Score: 1

    ...when I'm upping my FSB to 900mhz...oh wait.

    Unless there is a massive reduction in CAS latency or something (much more than this), "fast" memory speeds mean absolutely nothing. This is nothing but a slashvertisement. Wake me up when it's $40.

    1. Re:Just what I need... by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      Cue complaints about metric prefixes in 3 ... 2 ...

    2. Re:Just what I need... by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unless there is a massive reduction in CAS latency or something (much more than this), "fast" memory speeds mean absolutely nothing to me TODAY. This is nothing but a slashvertisement. Wake me up when it's $40.

      text added
      Just because one piece of hardware is pushed beyond necessity doesn't mean it's useless. Wait for the other components to require faster memory (for games/servers OR game servers :P).

      It's useless to you today, but you say "wake me up when" means you would find it news, if you could afford it...

      --
      Disclaimer: I am not god.
      We may not be created equal
      But we can be treated equal.
    3. Re:Just what I need... by st3v · · Score: 1

      A latency of 8 on DDR3 when the speed is 2GHz means 0.5ns per cycle or 8*0.5ns = 4ns latency. A latency of 3 on DDR2 when the speed is 800MHz means 1.25ns per cycle or 3*1.25ns = 3.75ns latency. Almost the same.

    4. Re:Just what I need... by Glonoinha · · Score: 1

      I'm standing by, just in case...

      --
      Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
    5. Re:Just what I need... by gardyloo · · Score: 1

      Hey, you don't know how slowly I'm counting!

  6. The fastest in the world ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    until next month, when someone else announces something faster.

  7. You're lucky by davidwr · · Score: 5, Funny

    No matter how hard I try, I can only get my kernel to crash in mundane ways. What's your secret?

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:You're lucky by fok · · Score: 5, Funny

      Bad RAM, apparently...

      --
      \m/
    2. Re:You're lucky by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 1

      buy overpriced junk

      Chances are, by the way he sounds: I assume hes buying the "cheapest/most reliable" RAM. Not realizing that the cheapest is probably not going to make it the most reliable.

      --
      Disclaimer: I am not god.
      We may not be created equal
      But we can be treated equal.
    3. Re:You're lucky by Quasar1999 · · Score: 1

      No, for years I used to buy the stupidly expensive, best spec'd, RAM I could find. I've now moved to one step above bulk economy OEM RAM, and haven't had a single problem since.

      Conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the over clocking crowd will think crappy RAM failing is due to them reaching the limits of what the chip could take in voltage and speed. So execs will sell crap to them implying it works well, sell it with no warranty, and laugh all the way to the bank. Sadly they've all been just a shitty chip failing, even those that I didnt over clock.

      --

      ---
      Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    4. Re:You're lucky by Walt+Dismal · · Score: 2, Funny

      I generally have no problem overclocking RAM, using a Tesla coil. For at least 15 us.

    5. Re:You're lucky by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Kingston ValueRAM for the win.

      OCZ
      Corsair
      Patriot
      Mushkin
      and even GSKILL

      Are all notorious for putting out useless overpriced, shiny, flashy, crap that isn't reliable. Sure, all companies do this to some extent, but the above are completely infatuated with it (top two) or are continuously pushing in that direction (bottom three).

      Heatpipes for my SLI RAM? 2.2 volts? AWESOME!

      I assert that the quality of RAM is inversely proportional to the value of the rebates.

    6. Re:You're lucky by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 1

      I'll concur with that. I bought nice expensive RAM for the first time in my life for my latest motherboard. Twice. Both sets resulted in crashes and memtest failures.

      I went back to the store the third time and told me to give me some RAM that didn't have a name. They said "how about Crucial?" I said "Is Crucial the name of the memory?" They said yes, so I said no, how about another one. Finally they sold me some cheap cheap Wintec stuff with no heat spreaders and it's been rock solid for a year now.

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
    7. Re:You're lucky by pdusen · · Score: 1

      What planet do you live on?

    8. Re:You're lucky by andreyvul · · Score: 1

      Agree. Bought 2 Corsair 1GB DDR333 SODIMMs for my laptop. Both failed memtest after 2 hours and were RMAed (by Canada Computers). Both replacement Corsairs passed the "week of memtest" test.
      All the Kingston RAM I have (original, not RMA) never failed a week of memtest.

      --
      proud caffeine whore
    9. Re:You're lucky by orangesquid · · Score: 1

      Oh, I know what you mean. I fabricated this neat thing that was like a MOSFET array on a Type I superconductor, using some ideas from core memory to handle the reading/writing of the B-fields. I couldn't afford enough liquid He to run it for very long... :(

      But then I got this great idea of poking a little in one of the sector 34 pipelines at the LHC and draining off some of theirs into a thin-film-silvered (for >98% FIR reflectivity) vacuum flask. I don't think anyone noticed, though.

      *grin*

      I got some hundreds-of-gigabit throughput on a single (though thousands of bits wide) bus that would make Sun Enterprise and SGI systems wet their pants and even make Crays and IBM z/90's break out into a cold sweat. Now if only I could find a RAID system with dozens of 10Gb-ethernet (overclocked, if I can figure out a way to use triaxial shielding techniques to make cables with a twisted-pair CAT6e electrical spec) jacks that could write to a vast array of 10K Ultra-640 SCSI drives (differential bus overclocked, of course). I don't think I'm going to be able to get 32 Hyper8-transports in a cross-bar interconnect, nor find fast enough PCIExpress controllers for the computer's network connection. Oh, crap, wait, I can just fabricate my own controllers on a Type II superconductor substrate and cool them with Liquid N2! DUH!

      Hey, does anyone know if ZFS can keep up with media-partition write speed to XFS (I think I would hit some limits on a 64-bit fs pretty quick)? Also, what routers can manage the amount of fiber I'd need to keep the system busy? There's a few thousand uncompressed DVD's on BitTorrent I'd like to download, as well as the complete record of all full-resolution artificial satellite and astronomical telescope and probe data that is publicly available, and the complete edit history of Wikipedia. (Bonus points for anyone who wants to convert that to Libraries-of-Congress!)

      --
      --TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
    10. Re:You're lucky by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Planet "thoroughly test your RAM at its rated specs, and use RAM that conforms to proper DDR /2/3 voltage specifications, and ignore RAM that has LEDs and words like "platinum" "dominator" or "OMG""

    11. Re:You're lucky by pdusen · · Score: 1

      I can personally attest to the reliability of Corsair and Mushkin RAM, having used them both in numerous builds. And judging from the huge followings of the other brands on your list, I don't know how you can possibly dismiss them as "Crap that isn't reliable."

    12. Re:You're lucky by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Please divulge the specs of your ram, including voltage.

  8. It would be news if... by CorporateSuit · · Score: 5, Funny
    DDR3 touted as slowest memory ever!

    Despite being composed of nothing but twigs and bailing wire, the patent and name for DDR3 has been bestowed upon the worst-ever designed memory chip in the recorded history of mankind. Its designer was quoted as saying "It may not be quick, but she's universal! She can plug herself onto any motherboard with enough sap and doornails. Best to mix the sap up with potater bugs for conductivity though!" Critics have been silent so far, because no one can figure out how in the hell the shoddy chips manage to actually store data (albeit at a snail's rate of transfer). The creator answers their questions with a wink "Maybe I did done use snails. You'll nevar know!"

    --
    I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
  9. Claim to Fame by Squeeself · · Score: 0

    My completely unknown company, Better Than Yours (tm), just released the largest capacity RAM in the world! It's 1MB larger than all our competitors, and comes with our personal guarantee that no one else matches our size! Slashdot us so we get free advertising!

  10. The point being? by raijinsetsu · · Score: 1

    Is there even a bus to enable the actual use of this speed? Most of the slow-down in a PC or server is in getting the information from memory to devices (especially storage devices). This might have limited use in embedded systems, though...

    I'm sticking with DDR2; at least it was an improvement over it's predecessor.

    1. Re:The point being? by evilbessie · · Score: 1

      Actually DDR2 was not that much of an improvement in the early days, only when they got about 800MHz did it actually become 'faster'. DDR3 was meant to; although I don't know if it does; solve some of the problems which DDR2 brought in.

    2. Re:The point being? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      One problem with these newer memory types is that latency isn't improving at all. Only throughput is. For example, 333 MHz DDR, 667 MHz DDR2, and 1333 MHz DDR3 generally have the same latencies, while theoretically the throughput is doubled for each new generation. This DDR3 latency of 8-8-8-24 corresponds to the same times as 2-2-2-6 on DDR, which doesn't sound too fancy.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    3. Re:The point being? by kipman725 · · Score: 1

      The latancey is falling. It has to wait the same amount of cycles but is running at a faster clock.

    4. Re:The point being? by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      The latancey is falling. It has to wait the same amount of cycles but is running at a faster clock.

      Not according to my observations. When going from DDR to DDR2, the data transfer rate doubles. For simplicity, let's keep the base clock frequency the same. For a typical base of 166 MHz, DDR has a transfer rate of 333 MHz, and DDR2 has 667 MHz.

      However, the latency numbers are also doubled, for example from 2.5 to 5. Thus the actual time of latency remains the same. The same kind of doubling happens when going from DDR2 to DDR3.

      When you say "the same amount of cycles", please look at DDR figures such as 2-2-2-6, DDR2 figures such as 4-4-4-12, and DDR3 figures like 8-8-8-24. Then tell me if these mean the same amount of cycles.

      Of course, the same number of cycles is there if you look at the base clock. I don't know the exact workings here, but I imagine the latencies are driven by the base clock, which is basically the same. DDR does 2 transfers per cycle, DDR2 does 4, and DDR3 does 8. But even if you only transfer one byte, you need to wait for the whole base cycle. It's the classical problem of latency vs. throughput once again.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  11. It's important to note... by mseidl · · Score: 2, Informative

    What does faster ram mean? What does faster harddisk mean? What does the fastest proc mean?

    Nothing noticeable. If you look at benchmarks super fast ram and over clocking rarely leave you with more than a 2-3% performance improvement, and if you're lucky 10%. But, 10% of already pretty fast leaves you with? Still, nothing noticeable.

    1. Re:It's important to note... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're installing Gentoo in a VM running under Vista you'll need all the speed you can get!

    2. Re:It's important to note... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, your problem is running vista, not your hardware.

    3. Re:It's important to note... by moose_hp · · Score: 1

      If you're installing [...] Vista you'll need all the speed you can get!

      FTFY

      --
      DON'T PANIC.
    4. Re:It's important to note... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how is babby formed?

    5. Re:It's important to note... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      instain mother

    6. Re:It's important to note... by BobSixtyFour · · Score: 1

      Depends on your bottlenecks.

      If your bottleneck is the hard drive, upgrading ram isn't going to do squat.

      If your bottleneck is your cup-n-string modem, upgrading your processor isn't going to help.

      If your bottleneck is the beer bottle, then fix it, and get it straight from the keg (or tap).

    7. Re:It's important to note... by Vagnaard · · Score: 1

      Well, even so, Ram quality usually has the lowest performance to dollar increase index on hardware. If you have decent ram, I'd prioritize working on another area instead to get better performance for your money. But in the end, it always depend how much performance you want and how much you are ready to pay for it.

      --
      He had a baseball bat, and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do. - Max Payne
    8. Re:It's important to note... by Glonoinha · · Score: 1

      My perspective on the subject - rather than memory that's 10% faster and cost twice as much, just buy twice as much of the regular stuff.

      1G of regular reliable memory is going to result in a computer that is a TON faster than a machine using 512M of the gold plated memory running with four nanoseconds less latency (or whatever.)

      And by regular stuff, I mean Crucial or Kingston.

      --
      Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
  12. New technology better than old! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    News at 11.

  13. oooook... by Taibhsear · · Score: 1

    So it's at

    Frequency: 1800MHz (P45)/ 2000MHz (790i)

    On two motherboards. And only faster on one of them. Touting it as "fastest in the world" is kind of misleading when it only is fastest on one motherboard chipset.

  14. buying RAM by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unless you have an unlimited budget, you probably have to decide between having a large amount of RAM and having the lowest-latency RAM when you are building a new system.

    Personally, I would rather have eight gigs of high-latency, lower speed RAM than two gigs of low-latency, higher-speed RAM. Who among you makes the other choice? And why?

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    1. Re:buying RAM by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 1

      I do numerical computations for a living. I'm diagonalizing matrices all day long, all of which lives in RAM. On my dual-core machine, I'd much rather run two jobs quickly than four jobs very slowly. Of course, if I had a quad-core machine, I'd feel differently.

    2. Re:buying RAM by Vagnaard · · Score: 1

      It depends, really. Eight gigs of high latency ram is not going to do squat if you install them on a gaming pc. Considering the fact that right now, most gaming pcs are running XP, I wouldn't recommend a gamer getting that much ram. That said, for more serious applications, a lot of slower ram would be the way to go. Here at work, we crunch a lot of numbers for our simulation. For that kind of application, getting 8 gig of ram per machine is the way to go. All in all, that ram would be gamer toy anyway...

      --
      He had a baseball bat, and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do. - Max Payne
    3. Re:buying RAM by Datamonstar · · Score: 1

      Music Producer/Composer. I load up several gigs of sample libraries into memory at once. The more the better. Latency is good enough to be tempo perfect and sync with my MIDI controller on either USB, Firewire, and of course through the MIDI bus on my sound card. Having the ability to utilize 8 gigs would be awesome, but I'm limited to 4 on XP right now. Upgrades are coming, and you can bet that my options will be decided on warranty, price, compatibility, capacity and then finally speed. Speed doesn't matter for what I do. In the old days, we didn't get an option in the first place and it never mattered then either. Sometimes I think we're getting bamboozled as consumers in this industry.

      --
      The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
    4. Re:buying RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless you have an unlimited budget, you probably have to decide between having a large amount of RAM and having the lowest-latency RAM when you are building a new system.

      Personally, I would rather have eight gigs of high-latency, lower speed RAM than two gigs of low-latency, higher-speed RAM. Who among you makes the other choice? And why?

      To some extent, I think the people buying DDR3 are the same people that are also buying BluRay writers. It seems like DDR3 is still mostly a fashion statement. But as Intel and AMD move towards 8-core processors in the next year and more 4-core processor workstations are produced, you have to wonder how many of those cores are spending clock cycles performing no-ops waiting on DDR2 RAM to get back to it. DDR3 would probably sell better if getting to a wasted ticks counter was as easy as checking how much swap/page space is in use.

    5. Re:buying RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And speaking of latency... I remember DDR being measured at like 3-3-3... and that was the SLOW variety.

    6. Re:buying RAM by TeknoHog · · Score: 4, Informative

      DDR3 has a much higher clock frequency, so 8 cycles of latency isn't that bad. Broadly speaking, latencies have stayed the same since DDR, while throughput has increased.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    7. Re:buying RAM by NovaHorizon · · Score: 1

      I'm still stuck with a machine running DDR400.. Your idea of slow RAM and my idea of slow RAM may be a bit different 0.o After all, anything in the DDR2 spectrum would make me giddy with performance boosts..

      --
      Defective Logic
    8. Re:buying RAM by toddestan · · Score: 1

      For people running 32bit operating systems, you're choice becomes 2-3GB of slow, high latency ram or 2-3GB of fast, low latency ram. Kind of makes things easier, eh?

    9. Re:buying RAM by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

      People still run 32 bit operating systems? Seriously?

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    10. Re:buying RAM by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Most people running Windows still run XP, and XP 64bit is pretty rare. And even in Vista-land, a lot of 64bit hardware inexplicably ships with 32bit Vista for some reason.

    11. Re:buying RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two gigs of low-latency. I don't run Vista, so I don't need sacks of RAM. If I'm doing intense number crunching, though, the faster RAM will speed things up a little.

    12. Re:buying RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I run Ubuntu, but I have a 32-bit chip. So yeah I run a 32-bit OS. It's not bloated as Windows though, so I don't need gigs of RAM. Definitely the 2GB of faster RAM, 8GB is a waste for any sane usage (avoiding Windows and huge mathematical problems).

  15. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only a month out of date...

    http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=3394