# Ram Question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ram-question/131088
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 6, 2002, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ram-question/131088 "2002-10-06T18:40:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Stccrd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stccrd)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2002, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ram-question/131088/1 "2002-10-06T18:40:47Z")
Is there a substantial difference between sd and ddr ram? I have a pc with 512 mb of sdram, and it supports both sd and ddr, and I wanted to upgrade, but i don’t know if it is worth it…
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2002, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ram-question/131088/2 "2002-10-06T21:54:00Z")
DDR is faster than SDRAM because it can shift data out on both the downward and upward flops of the clock pulse (hence **D** ouble **D** ata **R** ate) In theory this is a huge advantage, in practice it will depend on the performance of the rest of your system and whether the data rate for the RAM was actually the one of the bottlenecks in your setup.
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### Author:  [@Alereon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alereon)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2002, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ram-question/131088/3 "2002-10-06T21:55:20Z")
If you have an AMD Athlon XP Processor (or Duron 1Ghz and above), you will probably see a noticable increase in performance in gaming and other tasks that are sensitive to memory bandwidth. Just in every day use, loading applications, etc? Not likely. If you have a slower Duron or non-XP Athlon, there will still be a performance increase but it will not be as substantial.
If you have a P4, the performance will be hugely exaggerated compared to the Athlon XP. You would likely notice increases in everything you do. If you have a P3, you will see absolutely no difference whatsoever.