Good read on DDR-2

[P4Man]

> mean, Intel will still support the good old DDR400 in
>their newest chipsets.

I just read somewhere i925x (Alderwood) will NOT support DDR, only DDR2. Only Grandsdale would support DDR1 as well, but I'm not too sure what else the difference is betwen Alderwood and Grandsdale.. anyone to clue me in ?

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Mephistopheles]

Yes, I read that too. i925X won't support DDR1.

What I find remarkable is that Alderwood is definitely Canterwood's counterpart: it should be the higher-performing alternative. This makes me wonder if it makes any sense only to support DDR2 - would this mean that they built such a solid chipset that they fully counter the DDR2 latencies with it? Or aren't these platforms affected by the increased latencies?

Alderwood and granstdale, as far as I know, <b>will support DDR2-533</b> right from the start. I wonder why noone has heard any word on that 1066Mhz FSB yet....

Wasn't alderwood supposed to be 5% faster than canterwood?... or something?

<i><font color=red>You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete</font color=red> - Buckminster Fuller </i>

 

[pauldh]

With the introduction of low latency DDR550 like in this inquierer article, I sure hope they make DDR1 still an option. That there's some OC'ers ram.

<A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15311" target="_new">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15311</A>


ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pauldh on 04/13/04 12:12 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Frozen_Fallout]

Because they are trying to SELL DDR2 and the only really good way to do that is to force people to buy it. I think I see how Intel is going to sell DDR2 now, before I didn't. They are going to sell it on a preformance line of motherboards which might be intersting to see if it works. DDR2 does give you a performance advantige is what they will say and they will be kinda right but the performance wont come from DDR2 but the motherboard.

-------------------------------------------------
Remember what your fighting for, Remember why you even started fighting, and Remember who you are<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Frozen_Fallout on 04/13/04 12:16 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Mephistopheles]

Didn't I say so?...

<A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/20040413081748.html" target="_new">Intel i925X Gets 1066MHz PSB, DDR2 667MHz Memory Support</A>

😎

<i><font color=red>You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete</font color=red> - Buckminster Fuller </i>

 

[trooper11]

well you cant evne buy ddr 667 until maybe q1 of next year, so whats the point? thsi new chipset better brign some serious performance boost to overcome the higher latency and out of sync memory/ fsb ratio, unless intel just assumes anyone buying that chipset will be buying ddr2 533 sticks. I will be very interested to see how things turn out, alot of questions to be answered. personally, i dont think the new chipset will be enough to overcome the ram latency and be abl eot push it into the all around leader. only when ddr2 ramps up in speed will we see the real boost. i just think this is all to get ddr2 imbedded into the market and get roots in, the pluses of performance will come later. if intel can convince some that all these new fangandled technologies produce noticeable gains now, that much the better. Intel is a marketing machine after all, and they have plenty of ammo to work with.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Yes, but a 1066Mhz FSB can be paired <i>synchronously</i> with DDR2-533 or even DDR533.

If you stick to JEDEC-approved, I suspect synchronous operation of DDR2-533 with 1066Mhz might yield better performance than asynch with DDR400. This would be a reason to go DDR2... And it is a way to counter the initially higher latencies because a 1066+DDR2-533 would be faster than 800+DDR2-533, for sure, and probably even faster than 800+DDR400...

And seriously, it is not a surprise that they'd push DDR2-533 with 1066Mhz and not with 800Mhz FSB. After all, there's no point in having DDR2-533 if the extra bandwidth is useless for the processor!

<i><font color=red>You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete</font color=red> - Buckminster Fuller </i>

 

[Mephistopheles]

well you cant evne buy ddr 667 until maybe q1 of next year, so whats the point?

Really?

Take a look at <A HREF="http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/common/product_list.aspx?family_cd=DRM070202" target="_new">Samsung's DDR2</A> lineup. The listed DDR2 SDRAM modules are all in mass production. And check the supported speeds: CC (DDR2-400), D5 (DDR2-533) <b>and E6</b>, DDR2-667. I suspect that, if support for such memory was there with alderwood, we might be seeing more DDR2-667 sooner than in a year.

<i><font color=red>You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete</font color=red> - Buckminster Fuller </i>

 

[P4Man]

You beat me to it, I was about to post that link.

I think the issue with the 1066 bus is power/heat. Prescott seems thermally/power limited more than anything, and FSB takes a rather large chunk of the already "limited" power enveloppe. Within a given thermal enveloppe, I guess intel has to choose between performance (lower clockspeed, but higher FSB), and "sellability" (higher clock, lower FSB). If they can't get prescotts power consumption under control, I doubt they can do both without problems/compromises. If we see no 1066 fsb for a while, I'm pretty sure the main reason is power draw.

Otherwise, I agree DDR2-533 + 1066 will probably be slightly faster than DDR400 + 800 fsb, though I'm not convinced it will really be worth the higher price and higher power draw, at least initially (read: this year). And DDR-2 400 still doesnt make any sense anywhere AFAICS.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Mephistopheles]

Maybe DDR2-667 Support will make asynch operation of 1066Mhz and DDR2-667 possible... But even so, there's little benefit from the extra bandwidth, because a 1333Mhz is probably completely unfeasible right now.

I was under the impression that the support for DDR2-533 was already indicative of 1066Mhz. So the DDR2-667 support is a bit unusual....

<i><font color=red>You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete</font color=red> - Buckminster Fuller </i>

 

[trooper11]

yeah i can see that i suppose, although i dont know how available ddr2 667 will be whne the intel chipset is out. Maybe all the memory comapines will try to force ddr1 out, but most likely not, intel will do most of the pushing. if the projected double price of ddr1 is true, is the performance going to really be worth the upgrade this year? I cna completely agree that next year is a different story, but i just dont see the need this year, even if its time in your upgrade cycle. spending 500-700 for 1gb of ddr2 ram wont be easily to swallow. still its a wait and see thing, no one can make a decision on this till we actaully see what intel presents, its all paper for now.