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Hardware

A DIMM Future for RAM Bundles 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pheer-the-pun dept.
VeggiePossum23 writes "PC WORLD has an article about rising concerns that computer manufacturers will be cutting the amount of bundled RAM they sell with their PCs owing to rising prices of dynamic memory. The article claims that spot pricing shows a rise of almost $15.00 for 256MB modules of DDR DRAM in some markets. According to a Reuters article on ZDNet, the price rises are caused by shortage of memory chips, and this is causing the prices of memory to raise at the fastest rate in four years. Even Intel is said to be worried at the overall trend of price hikes for all types of memory. The Inquirer has a similiar article from a couple of weeks ago which includes a chart showing how the third-party memory manufacturers are doing. Kingston tops the chart for revenue."
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A DIMM Future for RAM Bundles

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  • That's a bummer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thebra ( 707939 ) * on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:48PM (#8943438) Homepage Journal
    glad I just upgraded. Even if it increases 15.00 dollars its still so much cheaper than it used to be.

    • Re:That's a bummer (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:54PM (#8943545) Homepage
      Even if it increases 15.00 dollars its still so much cheaper than it used to be.

      Tell me about it. I have a machine at home that has what was (at the time) a $700 16MB SIMM.

      At the time I thought it was a good deal and it made X on my Linux box so much more useable.

    • Re:That's a bummer (Score:5, Informative)

      by shotfeel ( 235240 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:56PM (#8943578)
      Yeah, I remember waiting for prices to drop to $100 / 1 MB SIMMs before upgrading.

      It wasn't all that long ago it would cost several times more to max our your RAM than it did to purchase the computer. Buy a $3k computer, put in $5-10k RAM (and drop another couple grand on a 20 MB hard drive).

    • Re:That's a bummer (Score:4, Informative)

      by vwjeff ( 709903 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:10PM (#8943730)
      Eight months ago I built a computer with two Kingston 512 MB PC2700 memory modules at a cost of $75 each. Today the exact same memory costs $115 each on newegg.

      • Re:That's a bummer (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There's actually something of a shortage of good "DDR1" chips at the moment. Apparently every major manufacturer is busy with DDR2/DDR3 chips (or "GDDR3"). Winbond for example has announced they soon discontinue their current CH-5 chips (0.13 micron, 200 MHz), and no announcement of follow-up. What is funny, their earlier (0.175 micron, 200 MHz) BH-5 chips perform much better -- you can't get CH-5 to reach the same ultra-tight latencies (2-2-2-5) at 200 MHz chip speed / 400 MHz memory bus speed. (This is wh
    • Me too. $166 Canadian ($128ish US) for a 512MB Kingston dual-channel DDR400 paired set. Sadly it was on backorder so my motherboard and CPU got here first...now they just sit there, mocking me "Oh, why don't you install us and dramatically boost your speeds? Oh yeah, you forgot to check if Kingston RAM was in stock! Loser!"

  • why more ram anyway? (Score:3, Funny)

    by earthstar ( 748263 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:49PM (#8943460) Journal
    why would any one need more than 512 mb ram any way????????????????game devlps shd stick to some limit instead of asking for more, for every new release
    • ....512MB of memory should be enough for anybody....

    • Re:why more ram anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:16PM (#8943799)
      actually this is a serious problem. the programmers who develop games sometimes don't understand that gamers have limits and can't break their banks for the 69.99 game and 200 $ worh of ram every new release.

      if programming and programmers tried to make their code smaller, while avoiding pitfalls like 600MB installs (re q3,halflife etc.) wouldn't the games be more popular?

      heck, even office 2003 full install is almost a gig. ONE FREAKING GIGABYTE!!!

      Tell me why you need a 300 meg install for a word processor, spell-check feature and some rtf formatting? anyone? ............. didn't think so.

      • gamers have limits and can't break their banks for the 69.99 game and 200 $ worh of ram every new release

        Call me crazy, but I can assure you that the price of keeping current with video cards outweighs RAM requirements by an order of magnitude or more. Unless there are games I've never heard of that still play just fine with my Geforce 2, but need 2 gigs of RAM. Hey, you never know...

      • Re:why more ram anyway? (Score:5, Funny)

        by edalytical ( 671270 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:26PM (#8943905)
        How else are you going to fit a flight simulator in?

      • if programming and programmers tried to make their code smaller, while avoiding pitfalls like 600MB installs (re q3,halflife etc.) wouldn't the games be more popular?

        I have no doubt that they would be more desireable. I do doubt they would sell more because games would cost more. Making the code smaller costs money, which would translate into higher prices and lower demand. It might even be the case that game manufacturers would make less money as any increased profit due to higher prices would be

        • Re:why more ram anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Vaevictis666 ( 680137 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @06:05PM (#8944289)
          Actually the problem right now isn't so much the size of the code. Getting the code smaller would ideally make the game faster, but not any smaller.

          Compare UT2004:

          Executable file: under 2 megabytes
          Entire /System directory (exe, settings, mutators): 56MB
          /Sounds (voice, announcer, shots, ambients): 353MB
          /Maps: 1550MB
          /Textures: 2790MB

          The whole thing is just going in a viscious cycle - the better game engines we have, the more video card power we need. The better the video card, the higher resolution we can run it in and keep it playable. The more resolution, the higher quality graphics we need on screen. The higher quality the graphics, the more space they take up. Textures alone take up half of the UT2004 install footprint. If you want to start reducing install sizes, start on the graphics quality first.

      • Computers are cheap. RAM is cheap. Developer time to optimize/tweak/etc is expensive and frequently non-productive, especially if you have a cross-platform product. Granted, with all the outsourcing going on...
      • Clippy is a 3D rendered multimedia powerhouse in Office 2003. He alone takes 300MB of ram. The rest of Office is exactly the same as it was in Office 97.

    • If you do any video work, your life will be much nicer with at least a gig of ram.
    • I personally like the idea of game developers pushing the limits of my system. I dont ever want to hear a game dev say "this courtyard would have looked realy nice with all the extra textures and lighting, and the water would have been acutaly simulated......but we didnt think joes machine could handle it..plus it plays the same either way".

      A FPS is not a browser. We need new features constantly or its the same game as the last 10. Push the limits. What do you think has driven the hardware boom of the
      • Fuck that, we don't need fucking features, we need fucking games. Real playable entertaining games.

      • Re:why more ram anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:37PM (#8944023)
        I want that. I'm sick and fucking tired of games that require me to buy new hardware, but have nothing new but slightly improved graphics. If you need a higher CPU/RAM for some awesome new kickass gameplay or AI, thats cool. But graphics are good enough already. Forget about graphicas and work on gameplay. Gameplay for the past year or two has been SEVERELY lacking. WHo the fuck wants to play FPS #12000567 which is the same as #13000566 but with a different name for the shotgun? Until they come out with something that needs more horsepower for the gameplay itself, I should never need to upgrade again- consoles or my computer.

  • Quick - how can we blame George W. Bush? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:50PM (#8943475)
    Let's see... it's a false silicon shortage created for the purpose of invading... um... no, wait: Bush's Saudi oil-family buddies are artificially driving production down, resulting in a... er, wait, how about this one: it's a Pentagon ploy to reduce civilian computing power and prevent blogs from getting the truth out about the phony oil war.

    That'll do. Another Slashdot truth is created.

  • Effects of Price Changes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tiberius_Fel ( 770739 ) <fel AT empirereborn DOT net> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:51PM (#8943483)
    IMHO the reduction won't affect serious computer users except in terms of the cost. If it costs me $50 more to get the 1GB of DDR RAM, well, I'll probably pay it.

    Where it will hurt people is the technologically illiterate, who simply take the default Dell configuration or whatever and then wonder why their systems are always low on RAM.
    • We have enough people thinking that you need 512mb of RAM to run Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer.

      If people think they actually need the 512mb rather than 256mb, then they'll pay the extra $40 or whatever for the ability to run their favorite games without closing some other programs.
      • In my experiences, you do need that much RAM to run Word and IE on top of XP comfortably.
      • For XP, you DO need 512 to run Word and IE. I added 256 megs to my (technically illiterate) friend's stock Dell box (which had 256 megs to begin with) and she called me the next day asking what the heck I did, it ran so much faster!

        I did probably cost Dell a sale, though -- she was all ready to buy a new computer because hers was "too slow"...
    • just a note: i dont think the default dell-ers have any idea that their ram is low. they just know that the machine may run slowly. they usually dont have any idea why. if you figure a 128MB machine with even just 32MB of shared video, thats only 96MB left for XP. not a good idea.

    • Re:Effects of Price Changes (Score:5, Insightful)

      by micromoog ( 206608 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:06PM (#8943689)
      Where it will hurt people is the technologically illiterate, who simply take the default Dell configuration or whatever and then wonder why their systems are always low on RAM.

      In other words, almost everyone buying computers.

      • Re:Effects of Price Changes (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dubbreak ( 623656 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @06:48PM (#8944637)
        In other words, almost everyone buying computers.

        Too bad i have no mod points today, that is insightful, sadly true, yet insightful.

        Reminds me of when a recent employer asked why their computer was so slow. I took a look it. Pretty generic xp1400 running windows XP with 128MB ram. However the poor thing was diving into swap like an anorexic teen into a fruit smoothy. I added another 128mb and it ran great (well for a crummy computer running multiple insantces of bonzai buddy). For them though it was a night and day difference and they had no clue what the prolbem was.

        Moral of the story: Anorexic teen girls love fruit smoothies. Especially "real" fruit smoothies.
        (and xp eats ram?)
    • They won't know their system is low on RAM. Windows uses a dynamic swap that will make up what you need. So all they'll have is a slow-ass system.

  • Switching over (Score:5, Insightful)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:51PM (#8943488) Homepage Journal
    A lot of the shortage has to do with the fact that companies are not starting to split their resources between DDR and DDR2. Between that, and the fact that it seems like companies may buy lots of replacement computers this year (2001 was the last strong year for purchasing, and 3-year replacement cycles are typical).

    So yea, be prepared to pay higher prices for gas, milk (and associated dairy products like ice cream), meat, RAM and who knows what else this year.

  • Oh crap. Not again. (Score:5, Funny)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:51PM (#8943489)
    You mean that they are again artificially forcing up the price of RAM?

    RAM prices are like oil prices, they have nothing to do with supply and demand but instead, are controlled by some secret or not so secret cartel.

  • Oh, the punishment! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:52PM (#8943497)
    Ewe shouldn't make baad ram jokes, they make others feel sheepish.

  • How come toasters are so cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by newt_sd ( 443682 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:52PM (#8943498) Homepage
    Ok how come the toaster manufacturers and automobile manufacturers don't seem to have this supply and demand problem? I chose these two because one seems pretty simple to make and the other exponentially more difficult and yet I can buy either without having to worry about significant increases in pricing each week. I just don't get it.
    Then again I didn't read the article either
    • Probably because toasters & automobiles don't have razor-thin margins like memory does. And let's not forget - the memory manufacturers get away with it because they CAN.
      • They can? Doesn't there need to be some sort of monopoly or collusion for price-fixing to even have a chance? Is there some guy pulling strings we don't know about here, or are you just blaming a conspiracy theory?

        Honestly, there have been some valid reasons for the memory problems including the buying cycle effecting demand, and the changeover to DDR2 effecting supply. These are real world variables that can be tracked and documented with evidence. For an incredibly complex unit like a RAM module and

        • Re:How come toasters are so cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:35PM (#8943996)
          What you don't realize is that there are very few actual makers of memory chips (modules are different). There have also been numerous proven cases of dumping over the years. It happens. The margins on RAM _are_ razorthin, though. Only harddrives have similar margins these days. I'm still seeing GeForce 4mx (MX!) cards going for over $100, while others sell for under $50. Some computer cases go for under $50 (WITH PSU), while others go over over $200 (withOUT PSU). That's the way the industry has evolved.

    • Re:How come toasters are so cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by molarmass192 ( 608071 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:01PM (#8943623) Homepage Journal
      Those are finished products, not components. Think plywood and sheet aluminium for better examples. The price of both of these varies a lot but the finished products homes and soda cans is relatively stable. A RAM module on it's own doesn't do a whole lot, it's just a component. The component price can vary like mad but video cards and MP3 player prices would be realtively stable. The problem is that those prices are stable, but within a rising trend.

    • Toaster factories don't cost 2E9+ USD (Score:4, Informative)

      by amorsen ( 7485 ) <benny+slashdot@amorsen.dk> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:06PM (#8943679)
      If there is a toaster shortage, you can build a new factory pretty rapidly. Not so with chips. With cars, demand is pretty steady and factories are rarely used to capacity. If you have a chip factory which is not used to capacity, producing an extra chip is very cheap, so it is a waste to not produce as many as you can. On the other hand, producing an extra car is rather expensive even when the factory is otherwise idle -- so idle capacity doesn't push car prices down to unsustainable levels.

    • Re:How come toasters are so cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:06PM (#8943686) Journal
      Toasters are made using a wholly different process, to much weaker tolerances. There's no uptight timing or voltage requirements for a toaster.

      Setup cost for a toaster factory would be minimal compared to chip fabs, and there are no doubt more toaster factories out there. When one toaster factory burns down (as some big chip fab did not to long ago, IIRC) its more easily replaced, and doubtless has minimal impact on the worlds toaster resources.

      Plus the demand for toasters is pretty constant. People buy toasters when their old one breaks. They dont rush out to buy a 5% faster "upgraded" toaster just because it's there.

      With computer tech there'll be a big rush to a tech, it'll get cheap as it reigns supreme, then get pricier as the industry moves away from it. It happened to EDO, FPDRAM, SDRAM, and now DDR as makers want to move quickly into the more lucrative DDR2 market. You can see the same trend with CPUs and other chipsets.

    • You mean like Ford [cnn.com] is having with the Mustang?

  • Not just DDR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bravehamster ( 44836 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:53PM (#8943513) Homepage Journal
    Regular ol' SDRAM is getting pretty damn pricey too. We've had to stop stocking it. It's become a "special order", as it's too expensive to keep any amount of inventory for it for any length of time.

    • Re:Not just DDR (Score:4, Informative)

      by TwinkieStix ( 571736 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:15PM (#8943788) Homepage
      If it's getting more expensive, that means that memory purchased today will be worth more to buyers tomorrow and worth the same to you (plus warehousing of course). You can charge tomorrow's prices for the ram and make a profit. If the price is rising faster than the cost to store it, then you are making money. So, your reason for not stocking it shouldn't be the rising price but rather the decreased demand for the product that makes it not cost effective to stock.

      • Re:Not just DDR (Score:2, Informative)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 )
        You are leaving out opportunity cost. He could be doing something else with that money instead of stocking SDRAM.

        Also, the demand for SDRAM, an almost obselete component, will likely fall, which very much increses the risk that SDRAM prices will fall, and fall much further than they would have otherwise because of this pricing bubble that they are involved in now.

        The interesting thing about computer components is the general pricing curve when you look at it over a very long term, like 10 years. Initial

  • Didn't they say this when... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by E-Lad ( 1262 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:54PM (#8943547)
    ...that epoxy factory in Japan burned to the ground in the mid-late 90s?

    I remember all the talking heads saying RAM prices would be exhorbinate for YEARS to come.

    Supply problems are short-lived, really. /ek

  • Bundled RAM too pricey anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @04:55PM (#8943559) Homepage Journal
    I always buy the minimum amount of memory offered when I buy a pre-built system. The OEMs want too much $/byte for pre-installed memory. The most cost effective way to get memory for a new system is to buy it from somebody like Crucial/Micron.
    • It's getting harder and harder to do that these days with the variety in DIMMs on the market and the compatibility problems between different manufacturers. Manufacturers are even having problems staying compatible with themselves at high speeds/low CAS values (eg the modules you can buy in pairs that are specially tested with each other).

      I have had a hell of a time with memory on a dual Xeon server I built recently; I know I wouldn't want to be mixing modules from different manufacturers on it!

  • DAMME shame, that (Score:4, Informative)

    by ottffssent ( 18387 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:00PM (#8943611)
    Sorry, couldn't resist.

    Seriously though, it's been nice for the flash market, which is where the manufacturers are shifting capacity. Prices there have dropped nicely. If both markets continue to do well, more capacity will come online, and prices will drop again across the board until manufacturers start ramping up DDR2 capacity at the expense of DDR1 (as has happened to PC133).

    Normal fluctuations in the RAM market - nothing to see here.

  • Maybe this is a good thing! (Score:3, Funny)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:01PM (#8943615)
    Maybe Micrososft will get their programmers to code better and use less memory. Maybe Nautilus won't use up 40+mb to just open up one windows, maybe Mozilla won't chew up 70+ mb and damn if GAIM doesn't use 40+mb....
    • Nah, we'll just make use of all that ridiculous harddrive space available nowadays and swap to disk, w00t!
    • This is OT, and I know it, but information never hurt anyone, even if it's a bit out of place.

      When top shows Gaim et al using 40+ meg of RAM, it's including shared libraries with it, too. You're also kind of overblowing your numbers: top is telling me that GAIM is only using 4mb of non-shared RAM (14mb including shared), which I don't think is exorbitant. Mozilla on the front page of CNN.com uses 32-19=13 meg of RAM. Tweak your caching if you find that it's using > 50mb, I suppose.

      In short, top is slig
      • When top shows Gaim et al using 40+ meg of RAM, it's including shared libraries with it, too.

        Yes, but if no other program you are running is using those same shared libraries, then your program is indeed using all that memory by itself.

        GAIM depends on GTK2 now, which is pushing resource usage up and up.
  • Do the products cuts have to do with allocating resources to the next generation of DDR technology? If so, then it's perfectly normal for the older tech to experience drops in production.

  • The wide price swings... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jake Diamond ( 770429 ) <[jdwhite] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:03PM (#8943642)
    are because the industry is so cut-throat. In good DRAM times, companies crowd in, adding new production capacity and trying to make a quick buck. They know this is going to kill prices a couple years down the road, but if they don't do it, they'll be left out in the cold as competitors grab their market share. Sure enough, a couple of years later oversupply kicks in. Companies manufacture less DRAM, shift production to more profitable products, etc... And the cycle begins anew. I really don't know what started it, unless it was the 1987 DRAM crash, when all but one US manufacturer dropped the DRAM business due to intense Japanese competition. (And illegal dumping, as it turned out.)

    Adding to this now is a fairly major transition from 200-300mm wafers. No matter what the DRAM companies tell you, they're never as good with their process as they claim they are. (I used to work for one of them.) Everyone is struggling to some degree with 0.11 micron compared to 0.13, and everyone (except perhaps Infineon, who started with it about three years ago) is struggling with 300mm wafer technology compared to 200mm.

    Add it all up, and it very likely is a legitimate shortage. No price fixing here.

  • Collusion, Collapse! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by throatmonster ( 147275 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:11PM (#8943740)
    1. Ram mfgs get together, collude to raise prices
    2. Brokers sell stocks of Ram mfgs on promise of increased profits
    3. Collusion breaks down as mfgs increase production to take advantage of better margins
    4. Prices go even lower

    Lather, rinse, repeat.

  • Still cheap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:13PM (#8943760)
    Considering that the last time I bought RAM, I paid $1/MB, current RAM prices could quadruple, and I'd still be happy. Besides, what kind of apps do you need more than say, 256MB RAM? Hell, most machines I see these days ship with 512MB, which is more than I need.

    • Re:Still cheap (Score:2, Interesting)

      by wedding ( 618458 )
      Ever dealt with CAD? Rendering software? Financial analysis tools?

      There are a ton of legitimate reasons to have a ton of RAM in a machine, and only about half can be written off as luxury items.

      When the price of a workstation for my CAD users rises by 10% due to RAM jumps, it's a real concern and I can't tell them to play less games or ask for less RAM hungry apps. When you're configuring machines with 2GB of RAM in them. this sort of incremental price jump hurts.

    • Using 256MB RAM (Score:5, Funny)

      by 200_success ( 623160 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @06:18PM (#8944390)
      Besides, what kind of apps do you need more than say, 256MB RAM?

      You have obviously never run any Java applications. Here's how to use up the first 128 MB:

      public class Hello {
      public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, world!");
      }
      }

  • This is even worse news for AMD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by X ( 1235 ) <x@xman.org> on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:13PM (#8943762) Homepage Journal
    I should think AMD should be even more worried. Their whole 64-bit computing initiative stood to gain a huge boost in the coming year as Windows 2003 finally got 64-bit support and server configuration with >4GB became mainstreamed. Now, folks might be looking at the larger memory requirements for 64-bit systems and try to stertch it a bit with a 32-bit Intel processor for a bit longer.

  • They've gotten so pricey (Score:3, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:16PM (#8943794) Journal
    That the local Best Buy now lists them as "ReAM Modules"

  • RAM Price Increases (Score:5, Funny)

    by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:16PM (#8943797)
    No problem. I still have the 8MB from my old 486DX66. I'll just sell it and buy another 514MB for my current machine. It must qualify as a collectible antique by now, no?
    • There are plenty of printers and industrial applications that rely on old EDO or FPDRAM's. That old stuff is worth good bucks to the right guy at the right time. I made a couple hundred bucks unloading some 128 megs of EDOs at a swap meet to some guy who wanted to upgrade a bunch of printers at his shop.

  • Again and again (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Maljin Jolt ( 746064 )
    This "news" about top memory pricing repeats itself every halfyear for 20 years. Perhaps it's time to hit those international memory syndicates?

  • Kingston tops the chart for revenue.

    It also topos the chart for crappy product.

    I've either had really bad luck in buying Kingston RAM, or Kingston's product is crap. I've built close to a dozen new systems in the last five years, and I used to be in the habit of buying the least expensive RAM that met the requirements for the architecture. That usually meant Kingston. Over a third of these systems had instability issues that I was able to directly attribute to bad RAM.

    I never had a problem exchan

    • Re:Kingston (Score:3, Interesting)

      by scharkalvin ( 72228 )
      Last time I looked Crucial was cheaper than Kingston, and is a MUCH better product! (Buy direct from their website via a link from the Gentoo website and they will make a donation to Gentoo Linux, or at least they were doing that last time I bought some dram from them).

      Also you don't save much dropping in speed from PC2700 to PC2100, unless you are looking for the drams over 512mb.

  • Dimmit there go our strategic DRAM reserves! (Score:5, Funny)

    by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:27PM (#8943914)
    Now Bush is going to want to drill in Nevada for DRAM!?

    Won't someone please think of the scorpions!

    We need to break this country of it's dependence on foreign DRAM once and for all.
  • I can get a AMD 2000+ and motherboard cheaper than I can get the 512 MB of mem to go into it. This doesn't seem right.

  • No magazine has integrity. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:37PM (#8944028) Homepage

    Be careful. Several times in the past publicity agents have placed stories like this in national magazines just before big price drops.

    Everything in the magazines now is for sale. No magazine of which I am aware has any integrity.

    Here's a quote from the Reuters article on ZDNet:

    "We believe the tight supply situation will continue for the time being on delays by rivals in a move to shrink circuitry" to 110 nanometers, said a semiconductor trader at Samsung.

    Notice the 100% conflict of interest.

    After the Taiwan earthquake the rise in prices was very fleeting, due to the hype by publicity agents, and not any real lack of supply. The did the same scam concerning VCR heads, saying the lack of supply would make VCRs go up in price. Instead, the price dropped sharply.

  • No big deal for OEM marketing (Score:4, Funny)

    by ejaw5 ( 570071 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @05:58PM (#8944236)
    Example computer advertising

    Before higher RAM costs

    QAPMOC_PH 5500: 256 MB RAM
    QAPMOC_PH 6200: 131,072 kB RAM

    Best Buy Sales droid:"Yes, the new 6200 has more RAM than the 5500 model."

    I know years ago on at least this one model of notebook Toshiba listed the 3 gb hardrive as "3,000,000 megabytes".

  • Buy slower memory (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wolfier ( 94144 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @08:10PM (#8945283)
    In most cases, it's the quantity, not speed, that matters anyway. The mantra is, keep everything in memory to minimize disk I/O since even the slowest memory is faster than the fastest disk.

    If I have to choose between 512MB of Dual Channel RAM and 1GB of Single Channel for my PC, I'd pick 1GB. Choice is easy.

  • Like gas? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Thursday April 22, 2004 @09:22PM (#8945704) Journal
    These prices are starting to fluctuate just like gas. If this keeps America might have to liberate some more poeple.

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