"Sharper DRAM price cuts ahead"

[NoobyDoo]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110617PR203.html

DRAM prices trended down last week (June 13-17) in both contract and channel markets amid blurred demand visibility and sluggish sales. But vendors are believed to be launching even sharper price cuts trying to stimulate sales and lessen inventory pressure, according to inSpectrum.
...
For the channel market, trade volume remained low. Industry-wide fretting about acute inventory pressure among all major memory module houses sent spot prices to even lower levels. inSpectrum expects a sharper price cut will be launched by module houses, meaning a spot price tumble is likely.

 

[ElFenix]

soon they'll be giving ram away like they did about 10 years ago

 

[code65536]

Newegg had 8GB of DDR3 for $45 after rebate a few days ago. Now you're telling me that in the very near future, that it'll probably be even lower than that?!?!

 

[wirednuts]

why not? i bet we see 4x4gb deals for $45 soon. 8gb system ram will be norm. until ddr4 comes out and suddenly theres a shortage of all ram in existence and we go back to paying $200 for 16gb

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

why not? i bet we see 4x4gb deals for $45 soon. 8gb system ram will be norm. until ddr4 comes out and suddenly theres a shortage of all ram in existence and we go back to paying $200 for 16gb

Yeah, no... 2x4GB, probably.

DDR4 is still at least two years away at the minimum.

 

[poohbear]

so why the slow demand? nobody's building systems anymore?

also my understanding is they're gonna skip DDR4 altogether, just like in the graphics market DDR4 didnt stay very long.

 

[Blain]

soon they'll be giving ram away like they did about 10 years ago

We're going to need a source for that information.
> Way Back <

 

[corkyg]

so why the slow demand? nobody's building systems anymore? ...

Possibly current economic uncertainty relegates new systems to a lower priority in the budget.

 

[PingSpike]

I've got 8 gigs but if it was expensive I wouldn't have bothered. I might buy some more to switch out my DDR2, but I don't NEED any and I'll only buy if its really cheap at this point.

Honestly, I think ram has sort of outrun user need. Not all users, but most of them. And if you have a 32-bit OS you can't even use more than 4gigs so why bother? And a lot of people have a 32-bit OS, even if its the new one like windows 7. This trickles down to applications too. If you have to support a 32-bit application, why not ONLY have a 32-bit application since it runs on 64-bit machines anyway?

No one is flinching, they're all waiting for something else to happen. Frankly I think MS should have forced the 64-bit issue by making Windows 7 64-bit only but I understand why they did not.

 

[GammaLaser]

also my understanding is they're gonna skip DDR4 altogether, just like in the graphics market DDR4 didnt stay very long.

No, DDR4 isn't the same thing as GDDR4. Not only that, but DDR4 is just the name of the JEDEC spec, it encompasses whatever technologies will be used in the generation of DRAMs after DDR3, so it makes no sense to "skip" it.

 

[wirednuts]

i also think tablet computers and cloud-computing are starting to stall out ram needs. and most people dont game on their computers outside of solitare and farmville. which is fine with me, im tired of spending $1000 to build a good gaming pc. these days that can be done for nearly $500 and im just fine with that.

 

[Terzo]

This morning I bought 2x4 1.5v 1600 sticks of Mushkin for $61 after rebate and code. I figured that's a pretty damn good price, especially for 4 gig sticks (right now I have 4x1 gig). Some 8 gig kits are actually as low as $45, but I have a soft spot for Mushkin. If prices continue to drop I may have to pick up some more ram.

I remember the summer when ddr2 was practically free after rebate, but I didn't purchase any. Six months later when I was building prices seemed to average $20/gig. I regretted not buying ram when it was cheaper, so this time around I intend to buy some reserve sets "just in case".

 

[Axon]

This morning I bought 2x4 1.5v 1600 sticks of Mushkin for $61 after rebate and code. I figured that's a pretty damn good price, especially for 4 gig sticks (right now I have 4x1 gig). Some 8 gig kits are actually as low as $45, but I have a soft spot for Mushkin. If prices continue to drop I may have to pick up some more ram.

I remember the summer when ddr2 was practically free after rebate, but I didn't purchase any. Six months later when I was building prices seemed to average $20/gig. I regretted not buying ram when it was cheaper, so this time around I intend to buy some reserve sets "just in case".

Same thing, I bought a bunch of DDR3 recently during all the sales. I have 3 4 gig kits and 3 8 gig kits.

 

[KingstonU]

Arg, so if I am contemplating a new build in say ~4 months (depending on when bulldozer actually presents itself) I should considering buying my RAM for said imaginary system now???

The savings for 8 GB, assuming they drop now, and bounce back up in a couple months, could be what, $20?

 

[taltamir]

RAM is extremely reliable, is already fast enough that speed increases have negligible effect (due to other parts of the system holding it back) and there are many companies that make it. The result is market saturation.
Its not that people aren't building systems, its that when people are building a new system they replace their CPU and mobo but keep their "old" ram.

RAM companies should really focus on increasing quantity, if they made larger and larger sticks software will make use of it... And extra ram will have a great impact on performance (unlike faster ram which is largely unnecessary)