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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (94537)	2/22/2000 9:45:00 AM
From: milo_morai	Respond to of 1573867

Ted,Thread, The Future of RAM: RDRAM vs. DDR Explained Final Words Dan Mepham It is unlikely that the two different solutions presented can coexist for very long--one will likely become the standard. Some months ago, Hyundai released a comparison matrix, which does an excellent job of summarizing the concerns associated with each type of RAM. 3 ? Excellent 2 ? Good 1 ? Poor PC133 PC266 DDR PC800 RDRAM Peak Bandwidth 1 3 2 Bus Effectiveness 2 1 3 Effective Bandwidth 1 3 3 Latency Speed 3 3 1 Price 3 3 1 Open Industry Specification 3 3 1 Utilization of Data & Adress Bus 2 2 3 DIMM Form Factor Compatibility 3 3 1 Power Consumption 3 2 1 ECC Support 3 3 1 Compatibility with Existing Specs 3 3 1 Intel & Rambus? RDRAM is a very promising technology. Its high clockspeed, extremely fast burst rates and incredible bus efficiency will make it very beneficial for most applications. As Rambus and Intel have insisted, the performance increases offered by RDRAM will likely increase as do the clockspeeds of the processors. All things said, though, RDRAM?s success is dependent more upon its cost to the consumer than on any other factor. At present, DDR SDRAM appears to be the more viable of the two solutions. DDR SDRAM won?t require a large investment on the part of manufacturers, and has thus far experienced decent yields. DDR simply seems, at present, to be the easier of the two options, while still offering performance on par with RDRAM. The success of DDR SDRAM, however, will be very dependent upon VIA?s ability to come through with competitive chipset releases. For the time being, neither is an excellent option. We have not yet seen a DDR chipset release, and RDRAM, while available, is far too costly for most users. If you?re looking to build a system within the next month or two at least, standard SDRAM will likely be your only option. In the meantime, try to stay on top of the issues, and don?t let advertising fool you. Expect to see quite a few confusing numbers floating around, such as PC133, PC266, PC600, PC700, PC800, PC1600, and PC2100. So when you see Intel advertising the new PC800 RDRAM memory, remember that, no, it?s not eight times as fast as PC100 memory. Likewise, when you see PC1600 and PC2100 DDR memory, remember that they?re not two to three times the speed of PC800 memory, regardless of what a salesperson tries to tell you. The plethora of new memory options that will present themselves in the next few months will be enough to overwhelm many potential buyers, so remember to sit back and do your homework before making that important purchase. The memory wars are just beginning, and the next few months promise to be very interesting indeed. Questions? Comments? Email Me. ® Back: Introduction Skip Ahead 1 Introduction hardwarecentral.com 2 History hardwarecentral.com 3 The Present Situation hardwarecentral.com 4 Intel's Solution - RDRAM hardwarecentral.com 5 AMD & VIA's Solution - DDR hardwarecentral.com 6 Final Words hardwarecentral.com Milo