Hi all; Re RDRAM prices and the jc-news data.
I said I'd take a look at the jc-news.com series of RDRAM and SDRAM pricing, to see if they followed along with the smsperling data or not. As I mentioned before, I believe that while the smsperling data form a good time series for RDRAM pricing, the memories included are not directly comparable to SDRAM pricing. That is, the smsperling data includes a lot of expensive ECC memory, while the SDRAM pricing includes far fewer such.
The smsperling data shows that PC600 and PC700 have been dropping significantly more than PC800 for the last three months. The jc-news data looks at the cheaper memory for each size, and since the PC600 and PC700 are cheapest, the jc-news data is therefore heavily weighted towards the PC600 and PC700 prices. This is part of the reason that the jc-news data shows RDRAM dropping price faster than smsperling. The other reason, I believe, is that more ECC type RDRAM has come up for sale on pricewatch, and this has skewed the smsperling data towards higher prices, as the PC800 ECC parts, in particular at 256MB, carry a substantial premium. See the following chart for the skew between PC800 and PC600, and how it has changed over time:
members.home.com
Those suggesting that the PC600 prices should be watched instead of the PC800 prices should note that Samsung claims that the vast majority of their RDRAM production is now PC800.
Any way, here is the data and the ratios computed according to the jc-news data. The ratio for any given week is given by the average of the ratios computed from 256, 128, and 64MB stick prices. Example 10/16:
(472.50/165.50 + 209.58/73.75 + 133.83/36.67)/3 = 3.12 => 212%
Ratio
256MB 128MB 64MB jc smsperling
------ ------ ------ ---- ----------
10/16
RDRAM 472.50 209.58 133.83 212% 203%
PC133 165.50 73.75 36.67
10/09
RDRAM 478.33 217.33 137.83 190% 181%
PC133 177.83 80.75 41.67
10/02
RDRAM 486.08 229.58 138.75 184% 162%
PC133 181.75 86.92 43.33
09/25
RDRAM 520.58 250.08 149.42 195% 153%
PC133 192.58 88.67 44.92
09/18
RDRAM 534.58 263.92 155.25 173% 144%
PC133 200.83 99.67 54.08
09/11
RDRAM 543.25 265.17 159.50 160% 141%
PC133 206.33 112.58 56.67
09/04
RDRAM 543.25 262.92 163.08 157% 140%
PC133 212.50 114.67 57.08
08/28
RDRAM 555.83 279.92 164.92 161% 158%
PC133 218.00 115.42 57.50
Based on this comparison, it doesn't look like it makes much difference if I use the smsperling data or the jc-news data. Both series show the same thing: RIMMs are expensive, and relative to DIMMs, their prices are not dropping as quickly as SDRAM prices. In fact, the jc-news data show a higher ratio than the smsperling data.
-- Carl
P.S. NightOwl; It's manifest destiny. |
