DDR2 was a flop for Intel, can AMD make it work?

[BaronMatrix]

I have been hearing a lot of talk about AM2 and DDR2 for AMD not providing any large perf increase, but then after reading an AnandTech story about AMD I remembered that when Intel shifted to DDR2, they got little to NO INCREASE in speed.

Maybe that's why AMD waited patiently for lower latency higher speed. Well, now's the time as OCZ has released a 3-2-2-9 1000MHz DDR2 part. Lookign at the jump it provides for the tested 955, my initial opinion seems to be bearing some fruit.

I'm not saying Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah nyah, but people should have looked at what AMD did with the K7 on DDR - kick Intel's ASSSSS!

I may be an AMD fanboy if that means I used to have Intel chips but haven't since K7 and x64. Anyway, with RAm like OCZs newest, I am almost ready to bet a paycheck - that's a lot for good SW devs - on the 20% I predicted way back when.

I guess we'll see, but I keep telling people AMD will show no chip before it's time. Yes, that's a lame wine joke, btu fits the circumstances perfectly. And for those people who wonder why AMD is RAISING prices, I'd have to say because they can. Rev. F has more than AM2, so Sun and Google will still be eating up Opterons and AlienWare will still be sucking up FXs no matter what Intel does with Conroe/Woodcrest.

I really hope that Conroe is as good as it seemed, but even in cases where PD and P4 were ahead of A64 and A64 X2, my AMD systems were always snappier in general than my Intel systems - I couldn't convince die hard Dell folks at work to get AMD.


As Johnny Storm says,

Flame On!!

 

[luminaris]

Yeah, I tend to agree. The AMDs always seem more peppy to me than Intels do.

I'm sure AMD will make very good use of it. Maybe not so much at first but we'll see. They wouldn't be switching to it if they thought they couldn't.

 

[endyen]

I'm going to agree with wusy.
DDR2 is all about faster speeds, and lower voltages.
DDR2 helps keep the dual core dothans cool.
Still there is no reason to have faster memory running on a slow bus.
Conroe will have a faster fsb, and will be able to gain more advantage from DDR2. With DDR2-800, Amd will not only have faster ram, but the real latencies (in terms of chip cycles) will be lower.
Presscott messed everything up for a while.

 

[noblekitty]

From the recent TG article on Tight Timings vs High Clock Frequencies:

"There are very small real-life differences in performance between low clock frequency/fast timing Winbond memory and high clock frequency/relaxed timing"

"To accurately answer the question we asked earlier in this article - namely, whether to go for tight timings or high clock frequencies - one should conduct the tests using a very fast CPU to eliminate bottlenecks. It is our opinion that even our overclocked 2610 MHz dual core Opteron wasn't really fast enough to do more than hint at a possible victory for tight timings at even higher CPU clock frequencies"

Do you think that if AMD is not going to make any major change in CPU design, they can fully use the bandwidth of the low lantency ddr2 1000? I doubt it. I never think that tight timing is going to make a difference that worth the price they asking for those memories. I just check on Newegg.com and a 1gig kit of DDR2 1000 CAS 5 ( not 3) is listed for $230. Hell, with 2/3 of that price, I can get a good brand, lower latency 2gig kit of DDR2 667. Which one will you rather have?
Obviously, the tight timing/high freq. memories are there for those few folks who want only the best but the best in their PCs. Same thing goes for the FX and EE series CPU. And at the same time, they are ridiculously overpriced.
I think AMD released the price table on the AM2 CPUs without price changes because they want to play the mind game with the consumers. Right now, there are a lot people who need to make an upgrade so they can play the latest games, but can't wait another 3 months for so for a real world comparison between Conroes and Athlon64. And when they saw the prices on those AM2 Athlon64 are only going up( instead of down); Plus we all know ( even if you try to deny yourself) that the expect performance of AM2 is not going to be major over 939. If I was one of them and have the moneys, and can't wait for Conroe, I will go out and get me a 939 setup right away.

Heck, If I was AMD, I would do the same. Sell people as much Athlon64 as I can before Conroe is released. Lots of folks can't go out and buy a whole new system again every 3 or 6 months.

 

[Mind_Rebuilding]

The major reasons for the transition to DDR-2:

DDR-2 consumes less power
DDR-2 can be cheaper than DDR-1

 

[noblekitty]

Of course, how else will you run those ram at such speed without overcloking your system. And so we are talking about overclocking here. Again, quote from the article:

"It is our opinion that even our overclocked 2610 MHz dual core Opteron wasn't really fast enough to do more than hint at a possible victory for tight timings at even higher CPU clock frequencies"

 

[BaronMatrix]

Still there is no reason to have faster memory running on a slow bus.

So basically you're, in a round about way, saying the same thing? Thx for all the comments and I still stick to my original "estimate." yes, I could be wrong, but I remember MANY posts here about how the latency issues handcuffed the AMD mem ctrlr from increasing overall speed. Those are gone and if they evn unofficially support these new RAM chips, we will see the kind of increase Anand showed for the 955.