I wish AMD would push the envelope more!

[Lasker]

I'm quite dissapointed that AMD seems to take a conservative approach for advancing their platforms. They settle only for 100mhz/133mhz ddr technology. Meanwhile, Intel is utilizing dual channel rambus, which actually performs well despite the fact that rambus at standard speeds is slower then sdr sdram.

If AMD would push for faster memory such as 200/266 DDR or even a dual channel 200/266 DDR solution, they could blow intel out of the water. They could also add an L3 cache on the chipset (like Micron's ddr chipset has done, and which also increased its performance). Memory manufacturers can already manufacture 150MHZ sdram, and the Nvidia Geforce2 Ultra sports 230MHZ ddr memory (which is usually able to hit 250MHZ). Hell, why not bypass ddr altogether and go for QDR, it would easily beat RAMBUS's theoritical bandwidth peaks that have been proved non-attainable by a great extent.

I understand the fact that AMD is budget minded, but they could sell alternate chipsets or make their primary chipset compatible with slower speeds of DDR memory for the lower end market segment. One can only imagine the predicament intel would be faced with if the above were to occur.

 

[noxipoo]

theres a couple of thing to keep in mind. availibility. QDR dram? second, price, dual channel rambus? p4s are not exactly flying off the shelfs. also most of things you want are comming. its not like its not.

 

[Noriaki]

DDR chips in that high speed grade are rather expensive, and not avaiable in mass quanity. nVidia uses 32MB or maybe 64...main system ram is 128MB at least (for users that use DDR ram I doubt they have any that want a measly 64MB), hell I'll have 384MB in my machine in 2 weeks (it's not DDR but still) nVidia's are also directly attached. DDR has to be placed on DIMMs and then transfered by physical contact points not soldered pins, that's not as reliable as direct connect solder you can get dust or things in thre..

dual channel DDR! GOOD GOD! ABit refused to use AMD750 becuase it required boards be 6 layer so it was to expensive, dual channel DDR would need like 10 for all the traces you'd need. Rambus only uses 16 data pins / channel, DDR uses 64. Single channel DDR needs as many data lines as 4 channel rambus.

I'm not meaning to hack you apart or flame you or anything, and I agree with you that all that would be nice, but I think it would cost an arm and a leg....maybe for the server/workstation market it would be a good idea...but I think a motherboard with dual channel DDR would be like $350US or more...I don't want to pay that kind of money. I think it's a while before these things are cost effective.

 

[Lasker]

You could say it was a frustation rant... I'm just disapointed with current computers performance. Also, even if you weren't willing to pay for that technology, it would probably lower the price of "standard" technology. Oh, and you got me on the traces problem for doing dual channel DDR, I didn't think of that problem. :frown:

 

[skull]

Isn't nvidia's chipset going to use dual channel SDRAM. DDR is only a few more traces(if any i know theres more pins)so it would be possible to have dual channel DDR ram but I doubt the cost would be worth the performance gain.

 

[DaddyG]

Lasker, manufactuers never show their complete hand. When what you have is competitive in the market place, they take the opportunity to make some profits and recoup R&D spending.

On the issue of memory bandwidth, to date, only a few applications benefit from increased bandwidth. Most applications are getting better than 85% cache hit rate (L1 and L2) combined. Micron has decided that they are essentially going to use unused real-estate on the chipset as L3 cache. If the L3 doesn't cause dramatic reductions in chipset yields, then maybe the Micron chipset will prove useful.

 

[Midnight Rambler]

<< You could say it was a frustation rant... I'm just disapointed with current computers performance >>

WTF? Obviously you never had to suffer through the days of an 8088 with 256K and dual 5.25 floppies (if you were lucky) ...

 

[jhu]

suffer? those were the days! and those old programs still work on todays processors. kinda sad