Re: is the biggest load of Bollocks...
Alan,
You might want to take another look at those tests. Remember that PC800 is a barely shipping technology, and I believe that Ian was comparing its price/performance to VC133 and DDR in his comments. VC133 is basically coming out at the same time as Rambus, but with far less fanfare (it doesn't really need it, since compared with PC100 it has better performance for the same price). DDR is about 2 months behind rambus - but again, it shouldn't need much marketing since it has obvious price/performance benefits.
The VIA chipset has speed adjustable, asynchronous buses that add a performance penalty of something less than 5% compared to the fixed speed Intel chipsets, depending on the application. Consider what Coppermine will do with VC133 on a fixed speed bus. And take another look at the Athlon - running on bottom feeder memory, at a 33MHZ clock speed disadvantage, it still beats Coppermine on some of the benchmarks - and Athlon will have VC133 by the end of the year, and DDR shortly after that, and Coppermine must do what's necessary to keep up in the price/performance race with Athlon.
If what you are saying is that Rambus 800 is superior to PC133 for some applications, you are right. But it is also superior to 66MHZ EDO, which is almost as relevant.
Rambus will have to justify itself against VC133 and DDR 200/266 to survive. Do you think that it will be able to?
Dan |
