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AMD Enters Desktop Memory Market
siliconbits writes "AMD has quietly released a new range of memory products and recycled the Radeon brand, which moves from graphics processing units to memory modules. According to the product page, AMD Radeon for systems are 'ideally' suited for the company's APU and CPU solutions and have been 'tested to the highest industry standards on AMD platforms.' Three different categories are currently on offer, roughly matching AMD's APU/CPU product categories; Entertainment, Ultra Pro and Enterprise. Oddly enough, the company is offering only 2GB modules with data rates at 1333.33MT/s and 1600MT/s, with 9-9-9 and 11-11-11 timings for the first two product ranges respectively."
Maybe they could take whatever they're smoking and sell that instead. I'd pay good money for it!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Isn't AMD's single biggest weakness a lack of fabrication facilities? And they're introducing a line of memory modules for some heretofore-unseen vertical integration on the motherboard... Using the Radeon name. Poor ATI.
Integrated with the APU. That might be cool. Motherboards could be very, very tiny in the future.
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I know a guy that buys blank DVDs by brand name even when I clearly point out the industrially-packaged A-DATA disks for 1/3 the price on the top shelf, so I'm sure AMD will find a good following of sheeple for their memory.
Oddly enough, the company is offering only 2GB modules with data rates at 1333.33MT/s
1333.33 is too slow. 1337 would be better.
Three different categories are currently on offer, roughly matching AMD's APU/CPU product categories; Entertainment, Ultra Pro and Enterprise. Oddly enough, the company is offering only 2GB modules with data rates at 1333.33MT/s and 1600MT/s, with 9-9-9 and 11-11-11 timings for the first two product ranges respectively."
The suggestion that 1600MHz is too slow for what AMD is calling "Ultra Pro" (they presumably mean gamers) is just not substantiated by the data:
We looked at different memory speeds for the LGA 1156-based Core i7-870 and chose to run DDR3-800, -1066, -1333, and -1600 at fast, as well as relaxed, timings. Although the differences were typically very small, there were a few applications that obviously benefited from faster memory. This wasn’t surprising, as we already did similar comparisons on most of the other popular platforms:
In all cases, we’ve seen significant performance differences when looking at the synthetic or low-level benchmarks. Memory bandwidth does increase considerably if you speed up the memory transfer rate, and tightening timings also improves performance by cutting latencies. However, only a marginal fraction of these benefits actually arrive at the application level. Even going for the fastest memory available will give you a performance boost that is probably smaller than the effect a faster processor speed bin would deliver.
How many different memory manufacturers do we have already? About a "gazillion", I'd guess! As someone noted, you'd have to find some real "sheeple" who want to say it's AMD all the way, or something like that!
Memory is memory -- it doesn't have anything to do with the on-die memory controller. It's an application thing; most applications users use daily aren't doing constant memory pages, so tossing faster memory in is not going to do much.
No need to remember it, I'm drinking it!
Except that AMD's Fusion relies heavily on system memory since the on-die GPU doesn't have its own dedicated GDDR5 memory like traditional video cards provide. So although you're right that an increase in memory bandwidth for a traditional CPU doesn't do much, my point is that AMD's Fusion isn't a traditional CPU. You can't reference an Intel benchmark or even a non-APU AMD benchmark to compare.
The story in anandtech that you're quoting finds that higher bandwidth memory pushes up gaming performance when you're using the onboard video. That's certainly true, but the performance user willing to pay for performance memory is using a stand-alone video card. With a stand-alone card, the tomshardware results that I linked to are the relevant benchmark -- not the anandtech one you posted.
Don't get me wrong, AMD's on-die graphics are head-and-shoulders above even Intel's Sandy Bridge HD3000 graphics -- but they don't hold a candle to even basic video cards, like the Radeon 6670:
These APUs make for an ideal solution to replace entry-level PCs with crappy integrated graphics. And, they certainly could introduce a lot of graphics muscle to a segment historically light in that regard. If Llano catches a foothold there, the APU could impact peoples’ expectation of what a PC can do. Developers might start targeting a higher lowest common denominator in their games, and that’d of course be great news for PC gaming.
But once you reach outside of the budget basement and consider folks willing to use discrete graphics, the A-series’ utility is hamstrung. It’s easy to put an $80 Radeon HD 6670 in a cheap OEM box and walk away with something that easily trumps AMD’s product in both processing and graphics benchmarks.
considering that RAM business has repeatedly saw the bottom fell out from under it over the years (news flash - most RAM chip manufacturers have been losing money on the product most of the time) this is ONE more way AMD is going to accelerate its demise. Whichever MBA bone head that came up with this one ought to be drag out and shot in the base of his/her neck.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
If AMD is hoping to make a killing selling performance memory to "Ultra Pro" users, it's not going to do it by pairing it with Fusion. No performance user (gamers, CAD, etc) that is willing to shell out extra for AMD-branded memory is going to be using onboard graphics -- they would be using a discrete graphics card. In such cases, the relationship between main memory speed and onboard graphics is completely irrelevant. See this review breaking down Fusion's unsuitability for performance users:
When it comes to the desktop space, Llano’s prospects are decidedly less impressive in light of the competition. These APUs make for an ideal solution to replace entry-level PCs with crappy integrated graphics. And, they certainly could introduce a lot of graphics muscle to a segment historically light in that regard. If Llano catches a foothold there, the APU could impact peoples’ expectation of what a PC can do. Developers might start targeting a higher lowest common denominator in their games, and that’d of course be great news for PC gaming.
But once you reach outside of the budget basement and consider folks willing to use discrete graphics, the A-series’ utility is hamstrung. It’s easy to put an $80 Radeon HD 6670 in a cheap OEM box and walk away with something that easily trumps AMD’s product in both processing and graphics benchmarks.
So we can populate 4 slot motherboards to their full 32GB capacity and I'll buy 'em,.
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I'm not going to disagree with you on that point. But again, my initial argument with you is that you are incorrectly citing an Intel based benchmark to invalidate AMD's claim that their processors will realize a significant performance gain from increased memory bandwidth.
The margins on retail DRAM are really slim. Even in "performance" memory, where they charge more, there's still overhead in binning for the more aggressive timing numbers. Unless DRAM sticks were all you did, or your retail DRAM business was a front for a DRAM maker (as Crucial is for Micron), then I don't see how selling DRAM is going to add much to the bottom line of a large company like AMD. Are they going to charge more than Crucial does for the same stuff? Are they going to do something to make buyers feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt about their AMD CPU warranty if they don't use the "correct RAM", just so they can charge even more?
Not sure what you mean by Corsair sheeple -- Corsair prices very aggressively, particularly on a short-term sale basis. They are generally not marketed to appeal to the highend hobbyist market (which is what I assume you mean by "sheeple."). For that, you're looking at like G. Skill -- that's a straight fanboy brand.
I'm not much of a memory buyer -- as in, I only buy it every 3 or 4 years -- but Corsair has worked decently for me so far and if when I do a motherboard upgrade that needs DDR4, I will probably buy Corsair if it's priced as aggressively as it is pricing its DDR3 memory at the moment.
Ram has very slim profits, if they feel the need to enter that market, they must be really really desperate.
They are putting CPU, GPU, and Memory controller on the same die. Is it possible they can get a performance boost by changing something on the memory chip? Probably. Is it possible they could get a performance boost by changing the memory while still remaining compatible with regular RAM? In other words a special feature that only their APU knows how to use?