DDR3 Price Premium to Shrink to 10% in 2H

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

When Intel launched their P31 chipset last May, it was a definite step forward. The chipset itself brought some great new features to the table, and performed extremely well. It still retains its spot as one of the best chipsets available today. The most notable addition though, was DDR3 support. Coincidentally, that proved to be the least favored feature of the new chipset, all thanks to the insane module prices.

At that time, a moderate 2GB DDR3 would have cost at least $500, and while it's decreased in price somewhat, today's 2GB performance kits still retail for $400 - $500. Compare that to a 4GB DDR2 kit that retails for $150... or less. It's easy to see why DDR3 hasn't caught on. But to much chagrin, Intel's next chipset, X48, will be DDR3 only. At first it might seem like a bad thing, but it's a good thing for those who don't plan to purchase. The quicker X48 comes to market, the more DDR3 adoption there will be... the faster the prices will go down. Like most things, we just need to sit back and wait.

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The DRAM makers expect some PC vendors will be subsidized by Intel to migrate to DDR3-based platforms, and this should help encourage the entire industry to migrate accordingly. They noted that some PC vendors will only introduce DDR3-based systems in the second half of the year. About 30% of new PCs shipping worldwide will be powered by DDR3 in the fourth quarter of 2008, they estimated.

Source: DigiTimes
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[sbrehm72255]

DDR3 is still a bit on the rich side, but I'm making the switch (inprogress) here shortly.......................

But I just plain got lucky through the holidays and won a 2 gig kit of DDR3 (Kingston) and a DDR3 compatible MoBo (MSI P35 Platinum)............... Can't wait to see how well/bad this stuff performs compared to my current DDR2 Corsair.

 

[Rob Williams]

Nice win man! If the kit is one of their latest batch, then it should be pretty good for overclocking. I even managed to overclock their pre-release kit (last year) to DDR3-1500, so I can imagine the new stuff is even better.

 

[sbrehm72255]

Needless to say I was extremely happy when I found out that I won all this stuff, now all I have to do is receive it all..........

The memory package came this week, with more of it yet to come. Still waiting on the MoBo to show up, with any luck it'll come soon.

 

[Rob Williams]

Interesting... that's one of the earliest kits on the market, because Kingston's new DDR3 use a fancier heat-spreader. I reviewed that same kit in a review last Summer: http://techgage.com/article/kingston_2gb_hyperx_ddr3-1375_cl7

Hopefully your kit is a little newer than the one I had, and be very overclockable. I had these results with mine:

• 533MHz - 6-6-6-15-1T 1.5v
• 667MHz - 7-7-7-20-1T 1.7v
• 750MHz - 8-8-8-20-1T 2.0v

So feel free to go and beat them ;-)

 

[Greg King]

This price decrease is important to DDR3 sales in the near future but won't effect it at all long term considering that it not going anywhere anytime soon as more and more chipsets use it.

 

[Rob Williams]

Prices might not to down to the level of DDR2, at least soon, but even if they are lowered to the same prices that DDR2 was at, say, last summer, it would be a win. The actual benefits of DDR3 can be disputed, but the fact of the matter is, it's nice knowing that a high-bandwidth and low-latency kit is never going to be a bottleneck with any of your applications.