SiS, VIA back out from DDR400-supporting chipsets

[Tates]

Digitimes.com:

Seeing a recent cool-down in DDR400 fervor, Taiwanese chipset heavyweights Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and VIA Technologies have both quietly pulled out from plans to promote DDR400-supporting chipsets.

SiS has decided to cancel its DDR400-supporting 648DX and 746DX, leaving only its DDR333-supporting 648 and 746 chipsets, while VIA has taken out the P4X333 from its product list and decided to replace it with the P4X400 targeting the high-end.

According to chipset makers, DDR400 sales have mainly been handicapped by a lack of verification from JEDEC and lack of support from module makers. While some chipsets may indeed be able to support DDR400, as long as the standard has yet to be verified by JEDEC, official papers will only list DDR333 as the highest standard supported.

Moreover, the move to cancel DDR400-supporting chipsets will also help simplify the pricing of overly complicated product lines in the chipset market, with price differences between Taiwan-manufactured chipsets of only US$2-3.

The two chipset giants indicate that as their DDR333-supporting chipsets can support DDR400 by overclocking, motherboard makers can still launch DDR400-supporting boards, but any problems with compatibility or quality would be the responsibility of the motherboard makers themselves.

 

[LukFilm]

Sucks, I was looking forward to 648DX chipset

 

[fkloster]

 

[ElFenix]

well, as long as it has the right dividers i guess its fine.

 

[Chadder007]

We don't need DDR400 anywayz.....they should go ahead and move on to Dual Channel DDR 333 instead of supporting this overclocked DDR400 technology which isn't even certified.

 

[oldfart]

A lot of people here run DDR400 and quite a bit higher just fine on i845D/E/G boards. Yeah, its unofficial but it works very well.

 

[JackBurton]

We don't need DDR400 anywayz.....they should go ahead and move on to Dual Channel DDR 333 instead of supporting this overclocked DDR400 technology which isn't even certified.

I agree. I'm waiting for dual channel DDR333.

 

[dexvx]

I think part of the DDR400 fiasco is that you the instruction manual states that you can only run 1 DIMM at DDR400 and higher. IMO thats BS. If it has 2 or 3 (some even 4) DIMMs and its a DDR400 board, it should be able to run all of them at the stated spec. IMO, a lot of crap is being put on the hardware scene. Back a few years ago, companies released solid goods that were fully up to spec (440BX could have 4 dimms at 100Mhz, Via Apollo 133a could have 4 dimms at 133Mhz, AMD 761 can have 4 DDR Dimm banks at PC2100, etc), now its just a PR game to see who can get theirs up the highest with minimal expandability.

 

[NOX]

DDR400

Not much performance advantage over DDR333. Lets cut through all the BS and give us dual channel DDR!

 

[SexyK]

Suprising, considering it never worked anywhere near right. And don't go on saying DDR333 is enough. People wonder why the P4 needs RDRAM.

Kramer

 

[kgraeme]

Originally posted by: SexyK
Suprising, considering it never worked anywhere near right. And don't go on saying DDR333 is enough. People wonder why the P4 needs RDRAM.

Kramer

Well, that's what the new Dual Channel DDR Intel boards will be answering. They've dropped development of RDRAM in favor of DC DDR.

 

[MadRat]

Samsung's hybrid memory based on 90nm technology will make DDR obsolete.

Think two-stage memory, a superspeed buffer coupled to the traditional memory bank. Kind of brings the trend of most peripherals using buffers down to the memory level.

 

[vetteguy]

Originally posted by: kgraeme

Originally posted by: SexyK
Suprising, considering it never worked anywhere near right. And don't go on saying DDR333 is enough. People wonder why the P4 needs RDRAM.

Kramer

Well, that's what the new Dual Channel DDR Intel boards will be answering. They've dropped development of RDRAM in favor of DC DDR.

How soon will we see a Dual Channel DDR board? I'm planning on getting one of the next wave of P4's (like a 3GHz) and would love dual channel to go with it.

 

[Variant]

Um, stupid question probably.... this is only relating to the Intel-supporting chipsets, not the KT400? Just making sure I should still be ordering my Asus A7V8X

 

[Mavrick007]

Originally posted by: Variant
Um, stupid question probably.... this is only relating to the Intel-supporting chipsets, not the KT400? Just making sure I should still be ordering my Asus A7V8X

I was going to say the same thing. There's a few AMD boards out now that support DDR400 and they have alot of cool extras too like onboard firewire, SATA, and fsb of 333 as well. There's the Asus boards and there's also Abit with basically the same thing.

 

[Bovinicus]

I can definitely understand this decision. DDR400 is good simply because faster is always better. However, DDRII is on the horizon, and now QBM may emerge as the next standard. Either of these solutions would make a lot more sense to make a motherboard for because they are more capable of running at those higher speeds without problems.

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: Variant
Um, stupid question probably.... this is only relating to the Intel-supporting chipsets, not the KT400? Just making sure I should still be ordering my Asus A7V8X

The title states "SiS", "VIA". Official support and unofficial support are two different things. SiS, and VIA will cancel (or already have) upcoming chipsets which were to officially support DDR400.

As far as Intel, they are obviously sitting back and watching how the market is moving, and what others are doing. I'm sure Intel is working on something that will exceed that of DDR400. However, seeing that SiS, and VIA are backing AWAY from official support of DDR400 (canceling their upcoming chipsets), I don't see how Intel will release any chipsets supporting DDR400.

I think this is a good thing, lets move on to something better.

 

[Daikaiju]

Originally posted by: Variant
Um, stupid question probably.... this is only relating to the Intel-supporting chipsets, not the KT400? Just making sure I should still be ordering my Asus A7V8X

If you look at the Asus website (and any other mobo manufacturer that has a KT400 out or imminent) you'll notice that it doesn't mention DDR400/PC3200 under RAM. They support DDR333 and DDR266, but not DDR400 even though you could use it if you wished. The Aopen website has a pop-up window that appears when you click on any of the three KT400 boards they are releasing, explaining that while the boards accept DDR400, there is no official support for it and that if you intend to use it (for overclocking) you do so at your own risk. I don't think this news will affect the KT400 chipset motherboards as they do not officially support DDR400.

 

[Ilmater]

The new Intel announced, Kentron (Sp?) developed QDR (Quad Data Rate) SDRAM is far superior to DDR400. DDR 400 is only going to be out for a short while before QDR667 makes its way to center stage at the end of Q1 '03.

By the way, this statement is 50% false according to VIA's chief of marketing. Read this article over at The Inquirer and se for yourself.

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: Ilmater
By the way, this statement is 50% false according to VIA's chief of marketing. Read this article over at The Inquirer and se for yourself.

I think Inquirer is taking what Digitimes has said, or reported out of context.

?A representative from large chipset manufacturer Via said that his firm hadn't changed its position on supporting DDR 400 on its products.?

Official or unofficial? Very vague!

?The report, on Digitimes, suggested that SIS as well as Via would suspend production of chipsets using DDR 400 memory.?

Again, very vague. As vague as you can pretty much get! What Digitimes is reporting, from what I understand, is that VIA nor SiS will officially support DDR400 in its upcoming chipsets, thus canceling production of any proposed official DDR400 chipsets.

Doesn?t it have to be approved by JEDEC first before official support can be declared?

What the inquirer is trying to imply (in my mind) is that Digitimes was reporting that any newer chipsets released by VIA or SiS, will NOT have the luxury of using DDR400, which is not true because they are already boards that can use DDR400 from SiS and VIA.

 

[MadRat]

I'd rather have high speed smart buffers on the memory chips capable of 128k-512k of near-instant transfers than trying to eek out performance on the bleeding edge. High speed buffers are the future for bridging disimilar speed buses and true L3 caches. If Samsung can pull off a standard for smart buffering then that will gain us alot more in the near term than QBR or DDR technologies.