Micron Announces its First DDR4 Module, Production in Q4

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]matt_b[/nom]I have been curious for some time how the next DDR generation would pan out. Historically, graphic cards have been a generation ahead from desktop/laptop RAM. Since the video card market practically skipped DDR4, I was hoping the rest of the market would as well[/citation]

Graphics memory and system RAM are different tech. GDDR3 is far more similar to DDR2 than it is to DDR3 (still not the same as DDR2, but still). GDDR5 is very similar to DDR3. DDR4 has a completely new topology and it is an evolution of DDR3 that also uses some modifications that are made in graphics VRAM. Another difference between system RAM and graphics RAM would be that most graphics RAM can read and write at the same time, but system RAM can't. Data in graphics RAM is far more likely to be used once and replaced than data in system RAM.

 

[NuclearShadow]

[citation][nom]Brythespy[/nom]Kiddy Consoles? I'm a full PC gamer, but I'm defending the PS3 because of 1 thing. Give me a link to a build, or set of parts that can play MW3, BF3, ME3 with decent FPS and Graphics, that cost 200$? My 189 dollar 120GB PS3 can play games much better than my 800 something dollar rig. (GTX 550, i5, 4GB, 750GB).[/citation]

If your PS3 is outperforming your current rig ifyour specs are indeed what you posted then you should never touch a PC again, because whatever the problem is it is certainly on you.

Also I would like to point out that the PS3 is only so cheap because it is heavily aged. Go ahead and compare the original release price of the PS3 and even the old PC hardware of its time and has been shown over and over even back then you could build a superior budget PC for around the same cost.
To even think you would claim the PS3 could outperform modern PC hardware is just down right idiotic.

Please just give your PC away, you don't even deserve to have it.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]Brythespy[/nom]Kiddy Consoles? I'm a full PC gamer, but I'm defending the PS3 because of 1 thing. Give me a link to a build, or set of parts that can play MW3, BF3, ME3 with decent FPS and Graphics, that cost 200$? My 189 dollar 120GB PS3 can play games much better than my 800 something dollar rig. (GTX 550, i5, 4GB, 750GB).[/citation]

That rig is not worth $800. A $450 rig could beat it. Besides that, the PS3 shouldn't even come close to performance and quality on that desktop unless you are doing something very, very wrong.

 

[verbalizer]

Kiddy Consoles? I'm a full PC gamer, but I'm defending the PS3 because of 1 thing. Give me a link to a build, or set of parts that can play MW3, BF3, ME3 with decent FPS and Graphics, that cost 200$? My 189 dollar 120GB PS3 can play games much better than my 800 something dollar rig. (GTX 550, i5, 4GB, 750GB).

:lol: your not a 'full pc gamer' with a GTX 550Ti you ignoramus.
give you a link to build yourself an average unit and then call it a gamer will get you flamed in here.
' you have lot to learn and the force will not recruit you. '
you existence is not required..
erm..

 

[nyghtstar]

So what pray tell would you call a gamer rig that would compare to the price of a PS or Wii or Xbox? Oh yeah and out perform them? Be specific or be quiet...

 

[hannibal]

Too late for Haswell in the beginning at least. I think that they allready have Haswell guite ready, so maybe Haswell E versions get it first and then maybe Broadwell... But who knows, but there is very little reason for Intel to change their roadmap...

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]so what are the benefits again?[/citation]

So what are the benefits of using DDR3 over DDR2? Or how about DDR2 over original DDR?

 

[horaciopz]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]So what are the benefits of using DDR3 over DDR2? Or how about DDR2 over original DDR?[/citation]


A "faster" ram? lower voltages? gotta change to new plataforms that supports them? oh wait thats not a gain. As always, "they fix something is not broken" But well anything that is "progression" is good, even if its a small, microscope step.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]horaciopz[/nom]A "faster" ram? lower voltages? gotta change to new plataforms that supports them? oh wait thats not a gain. As always, "they fix something is not broken" But well anything that is "progression" is good, even if its a small, microscope step.[/citation]

As CPU performance increases, so too does their reliance on RAM. Faster cache can alleviate this (cache is why faster RAM doesn't have huge gains for CPUs), but only so much. Compare DDR2 533 to DDR3 1600 on a Phenom II x6 in benchmarks and tell me that progress in RAM isn't important. Even going from DDR3 1066MHz to DDR3 1600MHz in even Sandy Bridge is a significant step up. Haswell, unless it has significant cache and/or memory controller enhancements, will prefer 1600MHz and 1866MHz over 1333MHz and it will be a pretty sizable difference too.

 

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]randy87z[/nom]Video cards use DDR3 and GDDR4/5 which are both based off of DDR3. There is a difference between DDR and GDDR. They did not 'skip' DDR4.[/citation]
Sorry, I thought the " " would suffice enough for the sarcasm.

Of course they are slightly different techs, you make it out to be that GDDR and DDR are completely different from one another - but they achieve the same thing in a round about way. As RAM-intensive as gaming is, and considering how quick GDDR can be, I've always wondered if we could possibly just get motherboard RAM and graphic card RAM on the same boat. Could it work, could it finally take RAM out of the latency/performance bottleneck picture if you had 8+ gigabytes of GRRD5 in your computer, could it lower prices immensely due to mass production? As far as "G"DDR4, yes, we pretty much skipped that boat in the graphic card segment. ATI had a couple of cards with it, and I cannot comment much on Nvidia being much dissimilar.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]matt_b[/nom]Sorry, I thought the " " would suffice enough for the sarcasm.Of course they are slightly different techs, you make it out to be that GDDR and DDR are completely different from one another - but they achieve the same thing in a round about way. As RAM-intensive as gaming is, and considering how quick GDDR can be, I've always wondered if we could possibly just get motherboard RAM and graphic card RAM on the same boat. Could it work, could it finally take RAM out of the latency/performance bottleneck picture if you had 8+ gigabytes of GRRD5 in your computer, could it lower prices immensely due to mass production? As far as "G"DDR4, yes, we pretty much skipped that boat in the graphic card segment. ATI had a couple of cards with it, and I cannot comment much on Nvidia being much dissimilar.[/citation]

GDDR4 was skipped because it was not a good enough progression over GDDR3 and DDR3. It was based on DDR3, but GDDR5 was much better, so GDDR4 was abandoned for GDDR5.

Graphics RAM has higher latency than system RAM. GPUs don't need tight latency, just high bandwidth, so that is what it is optimized for. It's also much more expensive than DDR3. Sharing RAM between two or more processors increases latency even more.

 

[jn77]

Yeah.... my PS3 has an i7 980, 64gb DDR3, A 7990 with 6 mini display port connectors, 8 USB 3.0 connections, Wireless HD to the TV 2x2TB 2.5 10,000rpm HD's and a blue ray burner that burns the 8 layer 400gb discs.

I use it as a space heater cause it melts the discs that get put in it.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]sagansrun[/nom]Why would you use ECC in a desktop environment? Its slower than normal ram and what model MB are you using that supports ECC?[/citation]The speed difference is insignificant and is controlled by setting the wipe rate. You're confusing ECC memory with registered memory. ECC memory doesn't require registers (which do add a 10% performance hit). You only need registered memory with very large number of modules due to bus loading (and requires a motherboard that specifically supports registered modules). My motherboard is an Asus M4A785-M.. I'm using Kingston ECC DDR2 memory. Nothing special but the price premium over DDR2 at the time was only about 10% (since it's not registered).

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]sagansrun[/nom]Why would you use ECC in a desktop environment?[/citation]I'm also using encrypted filesystems since my desktop system (and server) have customer data on them. Memory bit errors in filesystem buffers cause really nasty corruption in files (as I found out when the BallistiX started failing due to unreliable "factory" overclock/overvoltage defaults).

 

[asusdude24]

sagansrun :

Why would you use ECC in a desktop environment?

I'm also using encrypted filesystems since my desktop system (and server) have customer data on them. Memory bit errors in filesystem buffers cause really nasty corruption in files (as I found out when the BallistiX started failing due to unreliable "factory" overclock/overvoltage defaults).

I use a system that has 96GB of ddr3 1333 ECC Registered memory. I use the EVGA SR-2 board and from the experiences that I've had (I've overclocked the memory to a solid 1600), The 1% performance hit for being ECC Registered is negligible considering the benefits of having that much ram. Performance wise, I've benchmarked the system with 48GB of regular DDR3 and 48GB of DDR3 ECC Registered, and the performance hit was negligible and not even noticeable in any of the applications I would use.

For most people, using this kind of memory is a waste, but if you need large quantities of ram, ECC Registered is generally the best route to go. However, there are now 8GB non ECC ddr3 sticks out there for use in consumer and workstation boards, specifically the ones using the sandy bridge cpus. Some of the new Asus boards can hold a rather large 64GB of regular DDR3, and these are high end consumer boards. The workstation / server boards can hold even more. The Asus Z9PE-D8 WS dual CPU board can hold 64GB of regular DDR3 memory or up to 256GB of ECC Registered memory. For a long time, the fastest standard DDR3 ECC Registered sticks were at 1333, but now you can find 1600 out there from Hynix, Samsung, etc.

Whether or not we see the benefits of the new DDR4 will be yet to be seen. Considering that the DDR3 is hardly saturated especially with the quad channel boards, I don't even know if it'd be worth it at this point. Maybe a year or two down the road with new cpus we will see the benefits. Until then I'm sticking with my SR-2.

 

[actionjksn]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]so what are the benefits again?[/citation]

They're not only faster but they use less juice, I think quite a bit less. The faster speeds may not provide much if any benefit right now but it would be good for future proofing and the lower energy use will help right away. Especially since most people are moving or have moved towards mobile devices.

 

[secretxax]

Ah, 2012:

- Arkham City and Diablo III released
- Ivy Bridge & PCI-e 3.0x GPUs released
- GTX 600x GPUs released
- Crysis 3 released

What's next, DDR4 in 1-2 years?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]secretxax[/nom]Ah, 2012:- Arkham City and Diablo III released- Ivy Bridge & PCI-e 3.0x GPUs released- GTX 600x GPUs released- Crysis 3 releasedWhat's next, DDR4 in 1-2 years?[/citation]

2012 also has Trinity and probably Piledriver, among other advances.

 

[verbalizer]

2012 also has Trinity and probably Piledriver, among other advances.

you call those advances..
(Trinity (yes) | Piledriver (remains to be seen))

 

[blazorthon]

you call those advances..
(Trinity (yes) | Piledriver (remains to be seen))

Yes, I call those advances. If Trinity is faster (CPU wise) than it's predecessor, then so will the Piledriver FXs (assuming that they keep the same brand name).

 

[jpoos]

[citation][nom]Brythespy[/nom]Kiddy Consoles? I'm a full PC gamer, but I'm defending the PS3 because of 1 thing. Give me a link to a build, or set of parts that can play MW3, BF3, ME3 with decent FPS and Graphics, that cost 200$? My 189 dollar 120GB PS3 can play games much better than my 800 something dollar rig. (GTX 550, i5, 4GB, 750GB).[/citation]

Death to consoles! seriously tho, how the hell is a ps3 gaming better than that rig? you replace the psu with an anemic hamster just for giggles?

 

[ipwn3r456]

Theres already DDR3 RAM at 2666 MHz.... Will DDR4 RAMs actually useful?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]ipwn3r456[/nom]Theres already DDR3 RAM at 2666 MHz.... Will DDR4 RAMs actually useful?[/citation]

DDR4 will bring in the new topology and will makes speeds like 2667MHz and higher actually be affordable, instead of costing several times more than regular 1333MHz or 1600MHz.