RAM, why so expensive?

[Hail_Ants]

Damn kids these days with their loud PCs and long hair! Way way back (ok, maybe just the early to mid nineties) one 4MB 30-pin SIMM (which was just about the only kind there was) topped out at 200 freakin’ dollars! Oh yeah, we had to walk to the stores, in two feet of snow etc…

At the time there was this big story going around that the reason it got so expensive was because there were only two RAM factories in the world (both in Japan) and one of them burnt down.

Anyone know if there was anything to that story?

[astro]

@Hail Ants

Damn kids these days with their loud PCs and long hair! Way way back (ok, maybe just the early to mid nineties) one 4MB 30-pin SIMM (which was just about the only kind there was) topped out at 200 freakin’ dollars! Oh yeah, we had to walk to the stores, in two feet of snow etc…

At the time there was this big story going around that the reason it got so expensive was because there were only two RAM factories in the world (both in Japan) and one of them burnt down.

Anyone know if there was anything to that story?

Oh it was real alright.
Story from 1994

What’s going to happen to memory prices over the next year? The fire at a Japanese epoxy plant on July 4, 1993 was used by spot-market speculators as an excuse to raise the price of SIMMs by 60%, from $25 to $40 for the 1-Meg by 9s. The Japanese Yen also reached a new high of 100 to the dollar at the same time, so the IC manufacturers raised their prices slightly to compensate for the exchange rate. (I calculated the increased price per chip, based on a doubling of the price of epoxy resin, would be $0.11, as there is less than a gram of epoxy per chip.)

Story from 1996

The big change in 1996 is that memory prices dropped spectacularly. A few years ago a fire in a factory in Japan that supplied a large portion of an epoxy used in chip manufacture doubled memory prices almost overnight. Computer manufacturers responded by building up inventory of memory chips to protect against a memory shortage. When a chip surplus early in the year began to drive prices down, the manufacturers responded by drawing down their inventory so they would not be stuck with a large volume of overpriced chips. This turned a small shortage into a glut. Today, a computer maker can put 32 megabytes of memory into a new system for about $300.

[Walloon]

When Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick began writing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1964, the world’s most powerful computer, at the University of Illinois, had 5 MB of RAM.

In 1986, a 512 KB memory upgrade for a Macintosh computer cost $1,000. Yes, that’s kilobytes.

[Starving_Artist]

@Bytegeist

We didn’t have lowercase letters either. Didn’t need 'em. Or backspace keys. You had one chance to enter everything perfectly, or else the computer hanged.*

…and we liked it that way!

[RandomLetters]

@Ale

Uh-oh… would you please elaborate on that?, my choice for the new PC is a P IV 3.0 Prescott, I´m looking for the best performance here (I´m into 3D animation, I need the horsepower)

Here are some good benchmarks of the Prescott CPU’s, compared with the older Northwood cores, as well as some Athlon 64’s & XPs. The Prescotts on average tend to run a little slower than the Northwoods at the same clockspeed - in the 3d max test the Prescotts trailed by a couple seconds.

Overall, the Prescott was a pretty poor design if you ask me. Intel doubled the L2 cache, but it still isn’t any faster, due to the insanely long pipeline Intel stuck on the chip, and Intel wouldn’t even be able to use that long pipeline clock the Prescotts up, due to the insane amounts of heat the chip throws off. I say go with the faster, cooler running Northwood.

[Peter_Morris]

ZX Spectrum with 48k? Luxury.

I started with the ZX81 just 1k built in. You could purchase 16k memory sticks that plugged into the slot on the back. Clive Sinclair said that 17k was more than anyone could possibly need.

[Bytegeist]

@Peter Morris

ZX Spectrum with 48k? Luxury.

I started with the ZX81 just 1k built in.

Ooooo, we used to dream of having 1 KB. Would have been a palace to us.

[SPOOFE]

Uh-oh… would you please elaborate on that?, my choice for the new PC is a P IV 3.0 Prescott, I´m looking for the best performance here (I´m into 3D animation, I need the horsepower)

If you use Maya or Lightwave, you want to get an Athlon64 board. If you’re using 3D Stuido Max, you want to get a Northwood P4.

Avoid Prescotts. Intel dropped the ball on that one.

[Jdeforrest]

@Ale

So I´m here writing down a list with the stuff I want on my new PC when it dawned on me that RAM is quite overpriced, for example the motherboard I choosed is an Intel D865 GBF with a 800MHZ bus, that´s listed at U$$ 165, and then the RAM a 512 Mb PC3200 Kingston bank, at U$$ 134; that´s almost as much for the RAM than for the whole MB and I can´t understand why a bunch of chips is almost as expensive as a much larger bunch of chips, connectors and sundry electronic stuff.

So, what´s the straight dope on RAM prices?

I don’t know if your upgrading your pc or buying a new one, but I just did a bunch of research on this exact stuff.

If your upgrading your motherboard, look into the ASUS P4P800. It’s a strong competitor to Intel’s 865 chipset for only about $50-$66 as can be found either through pricewatch or on ebay. A good review can be found here: Review
(note: I’m assuming your processor is a socket 478).

As for RAM, you can find a 1gb stick of Kingston DDR on ebay for around $110-$125 on ebay. About $100 on pricewatch for generic brand.