Here's my feelings on the Memory situation. I feel that both RDRAM and DDR can and will coexist in the market.
RDRAM I feel is the supirior memory for the P4. Right now, the difference bertween PC800 and PC2700 is negligable, and the difference between PC800 and PC2100 on the most popular platform (845-D) is at most 10%. With current prices, RDRAM is definately worth it performance wise. And I am also going to note that while this board doesn't have the goodies of boards like the 845 Ultra ARU, 8IRXP, etc, but Abit TH7II can hit 133fsb (some 140fsb) easily, and when using Samsung/Corsair RDRAM, you can easily have a 533fsb+PC1066 setup. This setup, is definately faster enough than 845-D @ 533fsb (Prolly at most 15% faster). Reallym DDR I feel, and THG not in so many words, but really gives the feeling that DDR is experiencing heavy signal degredation at PC2700 speeds, I personally, feel that the path stops here for DDR. I doubt that Pararell DDR will ever get above PC2700 speeds. And in that situation, DDR is pretty much at it's max, and even now, it barely keeps up with RDRAM, and as Ace's Hardware has shown, the improvments from going 400fsb+PC800 to 533fsb+PC1066 are very real, while, DDR will barely get any speed increase from 533fsb because it's not maxing out the fsb as it is.
So really, I do agree with THG that RDRAM is in for a comeback. And really, some people are saying that RDRAM prices are gonna come up soon as well, but I really think that isn't gonna happen. RDRAM is only gonna get faster, and as fsb increases even more, RDRAM will be faster and faster than DDR.
This hasn't even taken into account the whole thing about DDR gaining lkess from higher CPU clock speeds than RDRAM. I am not sure what to think about this. It does make sense to me that high clocked P4's will need faster RAM, only benchmarks will tell.
People have said, well what about Dual Channel DDR? People do not realize how expensive Dual Channel DDR is and how difficult it is to implement compared to 850's Dual Channel RDRAM platform. I will not deny that 850 is expensive, and that nVidia has done an amazing job in designing Dual Channel DDR in nForce, but I think that when it all irons out, a Dual Channel DDR chipset will be very much more expensive than an equivalent 850+PC1066 platform.
All this though does not mean that DDR is on it's way out. Hammer, unlike the P4 is:
1. Not as memory bandwidth hungry
2. Will not achive as high clock speeds as the P4
And this is why, I feel, that PC2700 will be plenty for a long time for Hammer.
I think the bottom line, is that DDR is a dead end. DDR is not going to get a whole lot faster, and really, it's latency is only going to get higher and higher. Meanwhile, RDRAM has a lot of head room, latency is getting lower as frequency gets higher (proven by Ace's Hardware as well), there's 4i Architechure (4 Banks vs 32 banks on current devices) which will cut costs, plus there is 32-bit and 64-bit RIMM's as well. So, DDR will stay for a while, especially in the AMD platform, but my prediction is if Intel goes back to Rambus, then we will see RDRAM back by this time next year. Really, I still think it sucks that Intel canceled Tulloch. It would've provided the same bandwidth of 850 but without the dual channels.
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