DDR (PC3200) - When? Why?

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PaiinKiilla

n00b
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Sep 3, 2006
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Okay, well, I am probably going to get banned or warned for this, but I feel as though this belongs here as after countless times searching this forum, DDR2 rules over all. Being with the old technology, well it seems old anyways, in the DDR era, I find myself helpless to the high price of memory. I currently have 1gb and would like 4gb, though XP will not allocate for all, I really do not care. Autodesk programs require high amounts of memory in order to function flawlessly so I started to search around for deals, prices, etc, and am surprised to find that for some stupid reason, DDR2 in much less than regular DDR; WHY?

I am constantly finding deals on DDR2, but never on regular DDR resulting in a fear of buying DDR when I could just sell my 989 board and CPU and up to AM2 for some DDR2. Not positive if the costs would even out, but the more I look, it would. I figure I can get a decent 4gb of DDR2 memory, 4x1, for about $60 after rebates, that is basically the price for 2gb of crappy memory. So WHEN is this going to change? WHEN will there be a deal? Will there even be a deal?

My last statement is WTF should I do? Is the price differentiation worth the change to AM2? Please help me with making my decisions as I may not be as computer "savvy" as most, but I can still get the job done.
 
I think this would be better off in General Hardware, or possibly the Memory forum. Most of the responses you will get here is " Wow In for 3"

As for your question.

Its the basis laws of economics. There is ample supplies of DDR2 Ram. Actually so much so because they flooded the market a few months back, hency why the prices tanked.

DDR Ram is now solidly last generation, and as such, there isn't much being produced. I would imagine the demand is still fairly large due to upgrade paths, etc. Low Supply with a higher demand = Higher Prices. Lots of people have sat on their good DDR Kits also.

Without knowing your setup, it is hard to recommend what to do in your instance. Even on the second hand market, good DDR Kits do carry a preminum.


Hope this at least gets you started on an answer. Its bascially econimics.
 
Spazilton said:
There is ample supplies of DDR2 Ram.
Click to expand...

Why yes, there are.

I doubt you're going to get banned, but the thread is probably getting moved to one of the aforementioned areas once a mod gets around to it.

If you think getting DDR is bad, look at SDRAM. The only people still buying it are for the most part upgrading an older system. 3x1GB of DDR is only going to set you back about $150, and if it's really going to help your system out significantly - that's a pretty cheap upgrade. As cheap as the same quantity of DDR2? No. But that's unlikely to ever be the case.

If you're doing CAD work - is this professional, educational, or personal work? If it's professional, and your current system's abilities are causing delays in your work, upgrade the damn thing. If you're having to frequently wait on the computer (and assuming more memory does the trick), $150 is damn cheap compared to the amount of work you're losing over time. If it's causing significant issues, you should be seriously looking at something like 4x2GB DDR2 + Q6600 + fairly recent video card with lots of memory (video RAM will probably help you more here than which card gives the most FPS for Crysis etc). If you've got money to throw around (I assume you don't, if you're posting a thread complaining about the $150 price of DDR in a subforum you seem to know is the wrong one, but who knows...) then something like RAID 1 or RAID 10 would also be interesting to look at. How far to go will depend on how big/complex the files you're working with are.

Edit: Looks like it was relocated to GH while I was typing - seamlessly from my perspective. These vBulletin guys know their stuff. :D
 
ashmedai said:
Why yes, there are.
If you think getting DDR is bad, look at SDRAM. The only people still buying it are for the most part upgrading an older system. 3x1GB of DDR is only going to set you back about $150, and if it's really going to help your system out significantly - that's a pretty cheap upgrade. As cheap as the same quantity of DDR2? No. But that's unlikely to ever be the case.
Click to expand...

agreed, which is why instead of upgrading to a C2D right now, i used my free 939 board and memory and got a new X2 CPU, will milk it for a year or so, at which time those parts will bring a large sum on ebay, at which time i will upgrade to something new ;)

i do it year after year, you wouldnt believe what i sold an old 423 Williamette setup complete with 1Gb of RD memory.......not very long ago
 
I should really start doing that instead of farming for dust bunnies...:rolleyes:

Can't rightly fold with them, either...apartment with shit for wires, so too many systems running at once is enough to trip breakers, where "too many" is roughly 3-4. o_O
 
You missed the era of cheap DDR. It was when there was an oversupply, yet people were no longer buying it -- they were going for DDR2 instead. This is around the same time that most manufacturers ceased DDR2 production (or severely limited it) in favor of DDR2 -- since both AMD and Intel were now both using it.

You'd get little to no performance increase from moving to a similar spec'd AM2 system (same cpu/chipset/amount of ram). If you do upgrade, get a better CPU to notice any difference, along with your 4GB of RAM.
 
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