DDR: Whyyyy?

[Garion]

I've been reading a lot of reviews on the various DDR chipsets, motherboards and performance figures. I have to ask one question - What's the point? Yeah, so it can run at "twice as fast as SDRAM", but nobody can seem to make it work right. All the benchmarks that I've seen have the DDR motherboards gaining MAYBE 5% performance over a good KT133A board and, in some cases, slower performance.

What's the point in spending an extra $100 between the MB and the RAM when you're really not going to see much out of it? I see no reason I should pay $300 for a MB/CPU when I can get the same for about $200 with nearly equal performance.

I'm sure everyone will say that SDRAM is at the end of it's life and everything will be DDR (including P4, if the rumor mill has it right) and that I'm wasting my money buying SDRAM. If I keep a MB/CPU/RAM for a year, then move it to a secondary box and upgrade my primary with a whole new setup no money is wasted!

I've read nearly all the reviews - I think the one that capped it was this review at x-bit Labswhere the KT133A kept up with the KT266 and AMD760 and pretty much spanked the ALI chipset in all the real benchmarks.

I might be being obtuse and missing something here, but I can't really see any reason to ante up the extra cash. I'd rather spend it on a Geforce3 instead of an Ultra where I'd really see a performance difference over the long haul.

Comments? Rants? Raves? Rotten eggs? Point out something that I'm missing?

- G

 

[GundamF91]

pretty accurate regarding your assessment. Athlon's not designed to take advantage of the extra memory bandwidth, even the A4's only "improved" on it. I too will grab the KT133A mobo and use up my SDRAM for now. If you can make your current SDRAM system last a year and half, QDR (quad. data rate) Ram would've been matured, and new generation of CPUs would be able to take full advantage of the thicker pipe. So if you invest in premature DDR right now, it's just as big of a deadend as SDRAM. of course, this applies to me since I dont' upgrade every 6mo. To each his own.

 

[Biggs]

DDR technology is more of an evolution than a revolution.

 

[Desmoquattro]

ddr...rdram...p4...they're all unproven technology. i'm hanging on to my good old 440bx for now. i had a black pearl but sold it on egay when tualatin new came out...kinda sucks. i'll change when i need to...and by that time...i'm sure everyone's pretty much settled in.

 

[Boonesmi]

with the new athlon4 i bet you will see more of a performance gain with ddr then we did with the thunderbird.

 

[SirPalomino]

To obtaine more arguments for DDR RAM we have to obtaine Athlon5 and Pentium5

 

[Kingofcomputer]

>> What's the point in spending an extra $100 between the MB and the RAM

Crucial PC2100 DDR is even cheaper than PC133 cas2.
The mb price difference is just about $30-40 now.

 

[Nosamk]

just asked the same question last nite; I have been looking for a new board. ended up getting a KT133A.

 

[MGMorden]

If you already have good (read: PC133) SDRAM then I'd say it's fine to get a KT133A board (though I'd wait for the KT266 boards so you can keep your options open). For someone like me though, whose RAM (really old PC100) isn't going to get it at 133mhz at all, then the choice is DDR. DDR is only a tad more expensive. The Athlon 4 will take more advantage of it then the T-Birds. To me that performance boost (and the upgrade in technology alone) is worth the minimal extra cost.