DDR3 Becomes the Better Buy

It happens with every iteration of memory. The point at which the newest form becomes the least expensive, in a bid to become most popular. That point has been reached with DDR3; as it is now just a tad more reasonably priced that DDR2. It is not the most popular memory type, but after Christmas, or perhaps after Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, it may become so.

from Maximum PC

In a change of pace, DDR2 pricing has finally surpassed DDR3, at least on the contract side. According to DRAMeXchange, contract quotes for 2GB DDR2 modules jumped up to an average of $31.50 in the first half of October, a little above DDR3’s $31 quote. In addition, 1Gb (gigabit, not gigabyte) DDR2 chips have settled at $1.78, slightly above DDR3 at $1.75.

In the spot market, DRAMeXchange notes that prices for 1Gb DDR2 surged by 5 percent in a single day on October 8, and average quotes for 1Gb DDR2 800MHz chips managed to top the $2 mark at $2.24.

What this all means going forward is anyone’s guess in the unpredictable memory market. But it at least appears that DDR3 will become a better bang/buck investment on the consumer side than DDR2. Elpida has already announced plans to increase output of DDR3 chips from 20,000-30,000 up to around 75,000 wafers per month, and Samsung also said it would ramp up production.

With the change in price, it now is probably less expensive to purchase an AMD motherboard that uses DDR3 instead of DDR2, because the memory pricing will make the overall transaction less with the more advanced motherboard and CPU.

Though not yet the case with Intel motherboards, the newest i5, i7, and soon to be released i3 motherboards are driving the memory makers to make more and more DDR3, to the exclusion of other types, as there is only so much capacity available.

Right now, the Core processors, with their use of Socket 775, are getting very inexpensive, and are still much less expensive than an i5 board, but it won’t be so forever. Still cheaper with DDR2, but maybe not by Black Friday – funny how much difference one day can make!

I await the next big trend, which will be DDR3 – ECC (error correcting code), which will become popular as more motherboards use more memory, and the Google findings about memory errors permeate their way through the buying public.

§

⌘

⌘

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Like the Night Ranger song, I need a touch of madness!

•