DDR2 and AMD

[nathanfrenk]

Hi everybody!

I've read something in Anandtech about future AMD CPUs suppporting DDR2. Does that mean that the current AMD 64 and 64 X2 don't work with DDR2. I'm only asking this because, from what I've seen, DDR2 seems to be actually cheaper than DDR.

Thanks!

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: nathanfrenk
Hi everybody!

I've read something in Anandtech about future AMD CPUs suppporting DDR2. Does that mean that the current AMD 64 and 64 X2 don't work with DDR2. I'm only asking this because, from what I've seen, DDR2 seems to be actually cheaper than DDR.

Thanks!

1. Yes, it's true, current AMD processors don't support DDR2, and yes they will early next year when DDR2 667 starts to get cheap.
2. DDR2 533 is slower than DDR 400 due to higher latency.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

DDR2 can be found for cheaper for a few reasons:

1. the stuff that?s going for real cheap right now is definitely slower than current DDR1, especially for AMD.
2. DDR2 is actually increasing in demand (and thus production) whereas DDR1 is actually dying off
3. DDR2 is cheaper to produce due to more efficient production processes.

Right now DDR2 isn't a highly attractive route for AMD, but in the future it will be a clearly better solution, at least in my opinion. The ability to have higher density chips and thus sticks as well as lower cost will mean we'll be able to have very large amounts of ram at affordable costs. While lower prices and larger capacity are definite upgrades, we probably won't be seeing much improvement in terms of actual memory performance (bandwidth/latency) until DDR2's successor.

 

[nathanfrenk]

Thanks!

 

[Vette73]

Also DDR2 even in high speed does not really help the Athlon64. BUT it has been shown to help the dual core Athlon/Opterons.

 

[Lord Banshee]

Marlin,
Where have you seen that DDR2 helps Dual Cores? I want to see

 

[w00t]

idk, about this m2 socket and ddr2 if it turns out to be like s939 when s754 was good i probably wont switch considering that the only good reason going to s939 was pci-e what else can they give me? ddr-2 maybe idk.

 

[Dribble]

The other things M2 processors will have is virtualization which means you can run one OS from within another one without much of a performance hit.
Normally that wouldn't mean much but with windows vista coming out next year it could prove really handy to be able to easily run up win XP from within vista for programmes/games that don't work in vista.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Marlin,
Where have you seen that DDR2 helps Dual Cores? I want to see

Look on the frontpage of anandtech. I can't remember if it was a news line or soemthing else but I remember seeing it talked about it there.

DDR1 on a single core is plenty for AMD. Dual core gets some help with DDR2. Thats what I have seen so far from early reports here and other places. Look for a memory test with the new dual cores and high sped DDR1. I think they brought up the DDR2 setup and what to expect?

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
Marlin,
Where have you seen that DDR2 helps Dual Cores? I want to see

Look on the frontpage of anandtech. I can't remember if it was a news line or soemthing else but I remember seeing it talked about it there.

DDR1 on a single core is plenty for AMD. Dual core gets some help with DDR2. Thats what I have seen so far from early reports here and other places. Look for a memory test with the new dual cores and high sped DDR1. I think they brought up the DDR2 setup and what to expect?

This is new to me as well...the last I heard was from AMD themselves. They state that DDR2 at 667MHz shows a small improvement over DDR at 400 on single cores, but I haven't seen anything specifically about DC response.

 

[tommo123]

Originally posted by: Dribble
The other things M2 processors will have is virtualization which means you can run one OS from within another one without much of a performance hit.

would that cover things like vmware/virtualpc etc?

 

[jiffylube1024]

Personally I think M2 with DDR2 is overblown. It's evolution, so it makes sense to switch to DDR2 at some point, but it won't offer any immediate performance gains. Socket 939 with DDR will be just fine for the next couple of years, especially as long as AMD keeps releasing newer/faster CPU's on 939 as well as the new socket (which they say they will).

 

[kamranziadar]

Well Socket 939 will be discontinue as soon as Socket M2 hit the market. I don;t see any indication of Socket 939 in AMD's road map.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: kamranziadar
Well Socket 939 will be discontinue as soon as Socket M2 hit the market. I don;t see any indication of Socket 939 in AMD's road map.

S939 is guaranteed to continue for 3-4 years after M2 is released...AMD made that promise a year ago to developers. However, the processors will be released on M2 first and S939 second.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: kamranziadar
Well Socket 939 will be discontinue as soon as Socket M2 hit the market. I don;t see any indication of Socket 939 in AMD's road map.

S939 is guaranteed to continue for 3-4 years after M2 is released...AMD made that promise a year ago to developers. However, the processors will be released on M2 first and S939 second.

Yep that is why they are already setting up to bring the Sempron to the socket 939. Will keep the OEMs happy. ala HP, compaq, gateway, eMachines, etc...

 

[sandorski]

One attractive part of DDR2 will be 2gb sticks(maybe even larger). Doubt we'll see DDR in such configurations, but for my luck there probably already is.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: sandorski
One attractive part of DDR2 will be 2gb sticks(maybe even larger). Doubt we'll see DDR in such configurations, but for my luck there probably already is.

Yup...there've been 2GB sticks of DDR out for more than a year.

 

[Furen]

Only registered through, right? I think there's actually 4GB quad-bank dimms as well, but all of these are way overpriced.

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: tommo123
would that cover things like vmware/virtualpc etc?

As to exactly what you need to use the new virtualization stuff your guess is as good as mine, all I know is it works better then what we have currently.

I don't think M2 is a major step forward - it'll probably give you another 5% performance or so. I didn't see any sign of higher clocked processors from AMD yet (road maps mention A64 5200 X2 but I bet that is just an M2 version of the 939 A64 4800 X2 only they added 400 to the number for DDR2).

However DDR2 is already getting quite a bit cheaper then DDR (for 1 mbyte sticks at least) so you when you build your next box with 2 gig ram it'll probably be $100 cheaper using DDR2.

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: Furen
Only registered through, right? I think there's actually 4GB quad-bank dimms as well, but all of these are way overpriced.

Sorry, this is true...but it's because none of the S939 motherboard chipsets are designed to accept more than 3GB of ram (so why make non-buffered 2GB sticks?).

 

[Diasper]

Thought it might be relevant here from a post in General Hardware:

It's all about cost/performance - DDR3 is yet unsituitable.


DDR2 is getting cheaper than DDR due to manufacturing + economies of scale (Intel). It's only set to get more expensive from here on in and might end up acting as a cost disadvantage over Intel.

DDR2's timings are getting rather good (eg Corsair's 512MB chips doing 3-2-2 at close to 700mhz) - by the time AMD launches these sort of lower timings will be much more diffuse and cheaper (for the enthusiast). Latencies from high density (1GB) might certainly become competitive with 1GB DDR very quickly and be able to offer it at lower cost. eg the best 1GB DDR is doing DDR500 at maybe 2.5-2-3.

DDR2 's will offer bandwidth advanatages to current DDR when it comes to dual-core. Anandtech did an article on this relataively recently and got upto 10% extra speed (when loading both cores one with Doom the other with encoding?). Of course, we will see whether dual-core will benefit in the future dual-core games under 'real life' testing conditions - it might be perhaps likely that most the time much bandwidth won't be needed as each core might not be demanding much bandwidth each time.


AMD needs to go DDR2 and the timing is right - Fundamentally, AMD can't be stuck tied to the now shrinking and increasingly expensive DDR market. Still AMD will benefit from DDR2 both on release and throughout M2's lifetime as DDR2 prices drop yet further and timings improve yet more - DDR2 has yet a long way to go.

Only things to add (as others have said) is that DDR2 is still only evolution than anything else and will provide small but significant advantages. Primarily, cost and then additional performance with dual-core over the standard DDR400. However, if you've got your dual-core running at DDR500mhz - I really don't see any major or even significant performance advantages coming from M2 outside of increased speeds - speeds that we are likely to see coming to S939 as AMD have agreed to support it for 3/4 more years and so should see 65nm.