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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (58294)	10/20/2000 11:22:10 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Hi sylvester80; Re comparing name brand vs cheapest, and CL2 vs CL3... CL2 vs CL3 is a different speed grading than PC600/700/800. The PC600/700/800 speed grading is a grading about the I/O of the chip, and corresponds exactly to PC133/P100/PC66. CL2/CL3 does have a corresponding speed grading in RDRAM. In RDRAM, the grading is 40ns/45ns. Unfortunately I don't think Samsung is shipping the 40ns latency RDRAM yet, so you can't select PC800/40 parts to compare prices with PC133/CL2. You can say that since PC800 is faster than PC133/CL3, it should therefore always carry a premium (as Rambus management has recently stated), if you want, but you want to compare technologies that are as alike as possible when doing these things. Certainly you can compare whatever prices you want to whatever else you want, but there are some problems with comparing PC133 CL2 prices to PC800. PC133/CL2 hasn't been available for very long, so it is overpriced quite similarly to how RDRAM was initially very expensive. If you do want to compare PC800 to PC133/CL2, well go for it. But you should be aware that CL2 is a very recent memory, and very recent memories drop in price very quickly. In fact, Kingston is quoting it as cheap as their PC133 CL3. In other words, if you choose to make that comparison, you may get numbers that at first show PC800 as being very cheap. Then, a few months from now (or maybe even already), you will look stupid, as PC133/CL2 will have dropped in price quite quickly. This will make it look like PC800 is losing the battle. If you want, you can go through that kind of exercise, but it is pretty easy to see what it will look like in a month or two. In fact, as noted at the end of this post, I think it is too late for you to perform that particular farce. No need to worry. By the end of the year we will likely be comparing PC800 to PC1600 and PC2100 prices. So when are the faster latency PC800 RIMMs going to come out? I don't know, but here is how to recognize them when they do. Look at locations 15 & 16, the last two digits in the part number: 15~16= tRAC(Row Access Time) & SPEED K8 = 45ns/800Mbps(400MHz) M8 = 40ns/800Mbps400MHz) usa.samsungsemi.com usa.samsungsemi.com As far as name brands and QC, the fact is that the mom and pop buyer have no idea of the history of the parts they buy, when they buy from a discount liquidator. If you buy direct from the manufacturer, i.e. through Crucial or Kingston, you can be assured of quality parts. Here's where you buy Samsung memory direct, but you have to be a business to buy here: mymemorystore.com But if you buy with a "special" on retail pricing you don't know where those parts have been, or what they have done, but you should have suspicions... Mom and pop are not in a position to recognize the original Samsung shipping containers, or determine whether they have been opened. The memory you buy could have been already used by someone else. Even if the packaging is pristine, and the component has never been touched, it could still be from a lot that was rejected by the customer. (This applies more to integrated circuits than DIMMs. Radio Shack used to be famous for selling those kinds of parts.) If you want to be sure of your memory, buy from the memory maker. Anybody with a shrink wrap table can generally fool mom and pop, and most of the time it doesn't matter, so mom and pop don't care. But it isn't fair to compare discounted merchandise against non discounted merchandise, name brand or not. If you want to compare name brand DIMM prices from Crucial, you should compare them with name brand RIMM prices direct from Sansung (in the above link) or maybe Kingston. Fair enough? Here's the "value" DIMM/RIMM price list from Kingston. This includes both DIMMs and RIMMs, and is an apples to apples comparison for memory pricing: no ECC ECC PC600 64MB $195.00 $204.00 PC133/CL3 64MB $ 69.00 $ 77.00 VCPC133/CL2 64MB $ 69.00 (Virtual Channel) valueram.com VC PC133/CL2 is the fastest SDRAM memory currently available, and that it smokes PC133 CL2 on VIA chipsets. -- Carl