DDR3 RAM Explained 200
Das Capitolin sends us to Benchmark Reviews for an in-depth feature on DDR3 memory that begins: "These are uncertain financial times we live in today, and the rise and fall of our economy has had [a] direct [effect] on consumer spending. It has already been one full year now that DDR3 has been patiently waiting for the enthusiast community to give it proper consideration, yet [its] success is still undermined by misconceptions and high price. Benchmark Reviews has been testing DDR3 more actively than anyone. ... Sadly, it might take an article like this to open the eyes of my fellow hardware enthusiast[s] and overclocker[s], because it seems like DDR3 is the technology nobody wants [badly] enough to learn about. Pity, because overclocking is what it's all about."
Re:Overclockers (Score:0, Interesting)
Like Slashtards who seriously think they can run a FOSS-only system in the real world.
Not Needed (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Hard disk speed, until SSDs become very common this is one of the causes of decreased speed because a HD can only run so fast
2) The OS. Vista is much much slower then other versions of Windows and as it is the main OS (For now) the fact that it struggles on a 1.6 GHZ dual-core CPU and 1 GB of RAM, only begins to tell you the sluggishness of the OS. And until MS fails and Linux becomes the top OS or MS manages to create a decently fast OS, this will be a problem
3) Connection speed. Its becoming where the Internet is nearly as important as the computer itself. And if you are still on dial-up (and in many places in the US thats all the connection choices offered) even a supercomputer will struggle with sites such as YouTube.
Until those problems get fixed, faster RAM won't make a bit of difference to the end-user.
Re:not cost effective for the performance gain (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want real performance improvement get a 64 bit OS and 8GB DDR2 instead of 2GB DDR3. It will probably cost less and you'll notice the performance improvement as fewer accesses to HD (given you're OS knows how to pre-fetch intelligently).
No advantage to DDR3 (?) (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, as the technology was brand new at the time, the motherboard, although capable of 1333mhz ram, it only detected it as 1066 (we double checked they sold us the right stuff), so we manually set the RAM in the BIOS to run at 1333.
After all the setup, on otherwise almost identically configured machines, we found absolutely 0 performance gain on the DDR3 machine over the other 3 DDR2-800 machines. Although one might argue that our applications we were using to test were not so memory intensive, the fact is it was a computationally intensive task that regularly accessed about 200-300mb of data from ram. I would think that even if everything would be pre-fetched into the 8MB CPU cache before it was used, we should at least see some small difference.
In the end, it seems that we spent an extra $800 for no noticeable performance gain.
Re:Memory Bandwidth... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm typing this, and by the time I release the key I'm pressing for the current letter the computer has already received it, sent it to the right app, which put it in the right text-box, updated the undo buffer, re-rendered the window, checked if it completes a word, and spell-checked the new word if it does (and readied a list of likely corrections if it isn't correct).
It's hard to get enthused about x% lower memory latency when it still takes me 100ms to process what my eyes see. (I know there are exceptions, and some software will benefit, but it's becoming rarer and rarer)
Re:No advantage to DDR3 (?) (Score:5, Interesting)
- We were using XP Pro x64 edition
- I believe there was 4GB RAM, possibly 8GB
- I tested exactly the same program that we wrote and compile with the same input data and timed it between the DDR2 and DDR3 machines.
- The processing took exactly the same number of seconds on both platforms. (Approx 20sec). Testing on older Xeon 3.6 gave me approx 50sec, and Pentium D-3.2 at 30 seconds.
Re:We Drink Ritalin (Score:3, Interesting)
> If PC gaming is dying, HTPC gaming can revive it.
Considering the HTPC itself doesn't seem to be gaining much traction these past couple years, and consoles have been encroaching (albeit very slowly) on the HTPC space, I'm interested to hear what your view on the topic is.
Re:Overclocking is stricly amateur level (Score:2, Interesting)
Every machine I have had since my 120 Pentium Doom special o/c'd to 133 has been overclocked with no problems. Once you have everything stable there is almost always at least 10% with room to spare.
Re:Just a tad over the top? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about the 4GB limit in Vista 32? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just a tad over the top? No ECC = NO buy (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, I'm on a 975X chipset with 4GB of DDR2 800 MHZ unbuffered ECC memory machine now. Not a single unforced error since I bought this machine and assembled it December, 2006. Nothing. This unit is primarily a gaming rig, the 3DMark 2006 score is 11500 with an 8800GTX, all with ECC memory.
The most irritating thing for me is, looking at the great new CPUs available, is the utter lack of any unbuffered ECC memory in the DDR3 range. This to me is unacceptable. I refuse to compromise so I will wait. Intel has a motherboard featuring DDR2 800 fully buffered memory for the 'high end workstation' , D5400XS, this is $600+. Supermicro offers something similar.
The X38 does DDR2 ECC, and for whatever reason the X48 took that away. I don't get why Intel wants to deny us DDR3 unbuffered ECC? Its really a selling point, a very good thing. If you overclock, its nice to have because it can tell you the limits minus the guesswork, not that I would bother with OC personally.
Fundamentally, without ECC, do you even know if the memory works at all? My experience leads me to believe that without ECC present, the answer is no at all.
Re:Just a tad over the top? No ECC = NO buy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just a tad over the top? No ECC = NO buy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just a tad over the top? (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason to buy DDR2 over DDR is because it is cheaper (and compatible with more stuff you want).
That would be a horrible reason to make new RAM, change the connection just enough without any improvement to the hardware. Not that I'd put it past some hardware makers.
Your statement about speed might have been true when DDR2 had just launched (wasn't paying attention back then), since the low-end DDR2 memory modules have the same transfer rate as high-end DDR modules, but DDR2 has topped off at a transfer rate of just over 3x DDR's limit. Most people I know have gotten the more reasonably priced sticks that have twice the DDR transfer rate, though. Maybe the article is on to something there..