Should have known I’d start a fight. For what it’s worth, I expect to get another year to a year and a half out of this thing. If I can bring extra RAM over to my next system, it’d be a nice plus, but $70 will be much less of a big deal by then …
LordVor: DDR400 is the fastest, and the final, DDR specification. Besides, the better forward compatibility is essentially free. In a year and a half, DDR400 will still have commodity value, much as PC133 does today. In fact, it will probably still be mainstream. DDR266 will be rather useless, as PC100 is today. Again, you would have a point if DDR400 was more expensive than DDR266, but since it ISN’T, there’s no reason not to get DDR266.
Apparently, nobody told any of these manufacturers. PC4200, 533 MHz.
Look, if it’s the same price, I have no problem with buying the faster memory that will work. That’s why I told him to skip SDRAM and go to DDR in the first place.
BTW, furt (yes, I’m still thinking of you), you can probably cut the price down closer to $60 if you get two 256MB sticks instead of one 512MB, but you’d have to throw a stick away if you decided you needed more memory than that. (Which you probably won’t. I can afford all the memory I want, and I stick with 512.)
-lv
LordVor: That RAM isn’t spec. It’s made for and sold exclusively to overclockers, who like pushing their bus speeds beyond spec. The fastest JEDEC (the organization that sets memory standards) DDR specification is DDR400, or PC3200, and this is the last official DDR speed that will ever be released. Eventually we’ll move to DDR2, but as this has just been implemented on videocards, it’s still aways off.
That may be, but if you’re telling me that nobody’s going to make a MB to take advantage of the higher memory speed in the next two years if something equally fast doesn’t come along shortly, I’d tell you to pull the other one. Memory speed is still bottlenecking CPU speed, and the CPU manufacturers want all the memory bandwidth they can get. It’s also been growing by leaps and bounds over the last 4 years, and I really doubt that they’d put up a stop sign now.
Anyhow, let’s address other points: MHz isn’t the only judge of speed. On AMD processors, latency (number of clock cycles before data starts streaming from a memory read/write request) is almost more important. You said yourself that high performance DDR400 would be $100/stick, which is out of the price range of the OP. If the “future upgrade” wouldn’t be bottlenecked by the DDR400 speed, it would certainly be bottlenecked by high latency DDR400 that can be had for $70.
And you also mentioned the commodity value. But the commondity value is pretty much only in the “sold as new” market. Used memory is only worth pennies on the dollar. Take, for example, this ebay auction of a PC133, 512MB used memory module which stands at $22.50 as of this posting. A year and a half ago, you’re paying close to two hundred dollars for that thing new. Heck, you’re still paying close to $80 for it new today.
So you probably wouldn’t want to use the cheap DDR400 in the “next upgrade” because of latency and/or bandwidth issues, you can’t afford the good DDR400 that you could possibly use if bandwidth isn’t an issue in the future (a big ‘if’). If you build a new computer from scratch you can just leave the old system in tact and find a good use for it (again making extra money spent on faster memory worthless), if you upgrade and sell off whatever memory you buy today you probably will make back the difference in today’s price between PC266 and PC400, but you certainly won’t make much more than that. And it seems like you need the money more today than you do in the future.
I stand by my recommendation of getting the cheapest memory that is as fast as the MB currently supports. I know you’re a big recycler Alereon, but I just don’t think that the costs justify it in this case. If the low latency stuff was in the price range, and the next upgrade was less than a year off, I’d agree with you and tell him to buy the $100 stuff.
-lv
Hmmmm… is buying RAM on ebay a bad idea? $22.50 sounds pretty good
furt: Yes. Generic and other low quality RAM often doesn’t work right. It might prevent the computer from booting, or just crash frequently. Generic and off-brand RAM is made from defective chips from legitimate manufacturers that have had the defective parts disabled, and additional chips added to keep the correct total amount of memory. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, as long as the new modules are rigorously tested. However, lax testing often goes along with low price.
LordVor: No, no one is going to make a motherboard that uses DDR faster than DDR400. And my point still stands, DDR400 just doesn’t cost any more than DDR266. Yes, high-performance DDR400 is significantly more expensive than dirt-cheap DDR266. However, dirt-cheap DDR400 is $5 more per 512MB than dirt-cheap DDR266, and good DDR400 is similarly $5 more per 512MB than good DDR266. For $5, you get the ability to use the RAM in a future system, or sell it for maybe $20 in two years, rather than tossing it. Besides, even low-end DDR400 can run with fast timings in DDR266 mode.
A word on upcoming memory changes: DDR2 is the DDR replacement. It has just started to be implemented in videocards, and usually a system implementation of memory technology lags at least a year behind its appearance on videocards. DDR2 might appear in mid-2004. It will probably be 2005 before mainstream CPUs support it, probably a bit longer before it’s price competitive. Changes in system architecture are going to make this take longer than most switches in memory technology, as both the CPU and motherboard must now support the new memory type. For example, while before you could run an original Athlon in a DDR motherboard, or an Athlon XP in a PC133 motherboard, now both the CPU and the motherboard must be made for DDR2.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3103154102.html
For American Army fans
And intel was never going to run P4s with DDR. Until Via went ahead and did it anyway. And I think that this is officially the most I’ve ever argued over $5.
-lv
Ummm…, I have a quick question on this topic as well. Sorry to hijack, but I’m not sure this question warrants a whole new thread.
So let’s say I have 256Megs of pc2100 in my system and I want to buy a nice shiny stick of 512 pc3300. How will my system handle the different ram speeds? Should I toss the old stick out and just put in the new one, or does it work ok to mix and match? Sorry again for the hijack…, I just didn’t figure this required another whole thread.
You can mix and match, but usually (depends on the MB) you have to run them both at the slower speed. Which means that, if the MB can handle the 400MHz memory at full speed, you may get better system performance by selling the old stick to furt for $15. (And he can buy a new one for $30, and have his 512MB for $45).
Lets make a deal!
-lv
Mixing and matching is usually fine, remembering that the RAM can only be run as fast as the slowest stick. If you’re running at 133Mhz FSB, then mixing DDR266 and DDR400 is fine. If you want to run a newer CPU, you’ll need to ditch the DDR266. Normal restrictions about mixing RAM of different manufacturers, poor quality, or on cheap motherboards apply. It SHOULD work without issues, but that doesn’t mean it will.
LordVor: Intel’s plan for the world was to use Direct Rambus DRAM. RDRAM was supposed to be faster, cheaper, and easier to implement than PC133 or DDR, thus taking the industry by storm. Instead, RDRAM was slower, two to four times as expensive, and MUCH harder to implement. Decisions by Rambus to sue everyone and their dog also caused significant dislike of the company. Intel was forced to abandon Rambus, leading to their disappearance from the market. Now, I know you’re making the point that one can’t predict the future, but the JEDEC will definitely not approve a DDR speed above DDR400. Single- and Dual-channel DDR400 will be what we use until DDR2 eventually replaces it.
Actually, that wasn’t my point. My point was “speed good” and “MB makers want to provide speed, and don’t necessarily care about the legalities and specifications involved”. I understand that JEDEC won’t approve a DDR speed above DDR400 (I’m assuming that it’s because to go above that you have to start tweaking voltages to the point where they won’t run slower memory?). I also understand that you’re stating that the top memory speed is going to stagnate for a span of two years. I’d bet that that has not happened before in the history of personal computing, and I, personally, don’t think it will happen now.
You’ll see MBs that automatically tweak voltages to get the faster memory running up to speed while being smart enough to keep the system stable like this asus tech is trying to do. They’ll run the faster memory async if they have to. As long as there is any performance gain to be had, somebody will exploit it.
I know, some of this stuff borders on the dreaded “overclocking”, but Intel has shown us that if you can overclock and still be stable, people don’t really care that you’re overclocking. (Wasn’t it somewhere in the middle of the PIII line that some of the “faster” cpus really looked an awful lot like their slower cousins with overclocker-tweaks built in?) Anyhow, we’ve gone from answering a simple memory question to predicting the future.
Would you at least agree that, should furt have a friend like dakravel who’s upgrading his own memory because his DDR266 is holding him back, he should try and pick up the used memory for 50% market price of new?
furt, buying used memory is a crap shoot if you do it from strangers, because you have no idea how the memory was used/abused. From a used computer store that takes returns, it would probably be ok. From a friend that you know isn’t dumping it because it’s unstable, it’s almost definitely ok. From a random guy on EBay? I’m not sure I’d risk it, but if you don’t mind the thought of losing that $30 with nothing to show for it, well, that’s a personal decision.
Just check the manufacturer! You want a name like “Kingston”, “Crucial”, etc. You do not want a name like “Generic” or “Larrry’s House of Cheap-Assed Memory”.
-lv