Memory Question

[Redfire29]

Forgive the slightly noobish aspect of this question, but can someone clarify to me what the difference is between DDR and DDR2 memory, and why they are similarly priced?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tweak155]

DDR is an older technology, as you could probably tell by the naming scheme. The new DDR2 memory is designed to work with newer processors such as AM2 by AMD, and of course in turn be faster. The clocks on DDR2 can reach an "effective" speed of 1333mhz which is blazing fast for a FSB speed between processor an memory.

DDR is 184 pin whilst DDR2 is 240 pin.

Not sure what else to say...take it from here boys.

 

[sivart]

the speed they run (in most occasions) at and the physical location of the "notch." Pricing is similar because there is roughly equal supply and demand for each type. A lot of motherboards run both types.

I am sure there are more technical differences, but these are the obvious ones.

 

[Lord Evermore]

There is more buffering and other techniques used to make DDR2 capable of reaching higher speeds without signal issues, but it results in higher latency in general. Only the very best DDR2 modules can be run with very low latencies, and it's still higher than DDR. However DDR simply can't be ramped up to the frequencies that DDR2 already can, and DDR2 will only get faster.

It could be compared to the Pentium4 when it was first released. In many cases it performed poorly compared to lower-clocked P3s, but a P3 wasn't going to reach much higher clock speeds without major redesigns (which is pretty much what the Core 2 Duo is).

DDR2 for some time was still more expensive than DDR. DDR remained in high demand, because AMD Athlon64-series CPUs supported it, while only certain chipsets for Intel CPUs supported DDR2. DDR2 also doesn't really perform any better than DDR, until much higher speeds are reached (DDR400 performs about as well as DDR2-533 in many cases). Since AMD CPUs have been very popular for some time, many people weren't rushing to buy new Intel setups with DDR2, so the sales weren't in volume so prices didn't drop quickly.

AMD has now moved to DDR2 with the new AM2 socket processors (because they want to be using memory that can reach higher speeds, and it's better for the industry to move to a new standard instead of staying with two, and they want to make sure that the CPU performance is what people make their choice based on). DDR2 sales volumes have increased recently because of performance increases with Intel boards, and very low prices on Intel CPUs as well. Now that both AMD and Intel are using DDR2, DDR production will go down, sales will go down, and prices will eventually rise for DDR while DDR2 will get cheaper. The same thing happens with every new standard, as older parts become less and less available, people have to decide whether to pay more to get that upgrade or replacement part, or buy an entirely new system.