John, My interpretation and responses to your questions. Others will, I'm sure disagree.
1. Are any of the major or mid-size OEM's embracing DDR for the P4, or is everyone still selling only SDRAM (95%) and RDRAM (5%) systems.
DDr is here, but not yet a volume seller. IMO, DDR will be the coming thing this Q for the INTC boxes, but SD will still predominate -- Most consumers will look at the quantity, not the type of RAM. As I go through the Home PCs at COMPUSA I see:
CPQ:
Presario 5320US Minitower Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 1.5GHz
512MB SDRAM , 40GB Hard Drive, 12X8X32 CD-RW and 12X DVD Drives, Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition $999.97
Presario 7006US Minitower
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 1.7GHz, 128MB RDRAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 16X DVD and 8X4X32 CD-RW Drives marked down from $2,299 to $999.99.
HWP:
Pavilion 7975 Minitower
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.0GHz, 512MB SDRAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 12X8X32 CD-RW and 16X DVD Drives, Microsoft® Windows® XP Home $1549.97
Pavilion 9995 Midtower
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.0GHz, 512MB SDRAM, 80GB Hard Drive, 2.4X DVD+RW Drive, Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition $1999.97
2. Rambus Inc. is still around?
Yes. Not just still around, but their stock has stabilized at ~ $9.00 for the last two months. They have an earnings CC scheduled for Thursday, January 10, 2002 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Time) and will be webcast at www.rambus.com. They are having a difficult time in court having lost every case so far as I know! Others may comment here as I don't really follow RMBS.
3. Are review sites still comparing AMD DDR performance to Intel RDRAM performance? (unfair, because you can't buy P4 RDRAM systems)
LOL. The generalized answer is -- INTC has the advertising and legal bucks and is going to get the favorable reviews & product on the market. IMO, a good write-up of the over-all year end situation is theinquirer.net
A quickie comparo from JC's:
Over here is one that won't be going into the Review Ratings pages, but it might interest you. It's just a quickie list of Northwood and XP 2000+ performance:
P4 Benchmarks(Using DDR for both)
2.2GHZ P4 2000+ Athlon XP
SysMark2001
Int C Creat 229 191
Off Productiv 143 154
3dmark 8005 8112 Sandra
Dhrystone 4273 4673
Whetstone 1145 2336
Whet SSE2 2682 [2336]
MM Int SSE2 8714 9338
MM FP SSE2 10801 10769
4. Last I checked the i845 with DDR performance was slightly below i850/RDRAM, so the Athon 1900+ was the undisputed king of performance. Is this still true?
I'd be inclined to think it's disputed now, but that AMD is still the undisputed price/performance king.
tgptndr |
