Is it just me, or did Ram used to be ALOT cheaper?

[madman322]

I remember when you could get 4GB DDR2 800 for like $40.00. Now its no cheaper than $80.00 I also remember when u could get 6GB DDR3 1600 for under $100.00. Now you can barely get anything under $140.00 Can anyone tell me why? Or if the price is going to go down again?

 

[ares1214]

uhh, i never remember being able to buy 6 gigs of GOOD 1600 MHz ram for under 100$ or 800 MHz ram for under 40$. the price of RAM is actually going down.

 

[Gedoe_]

ddr2 went up in price, big deal

 

[ares1214]

yea and by just a bit, ddr3 is a way better choice, so i only really care about that anyway.

 

[masterjaw]

DDR2 is moving the same path as DDR before. There's nothing new about it. Less supply would mean higher price. It's starting to pave its way for DDR3.

 

[terr281]

We can just hold that DDR3's price falls as quickly as DDR2's price did.

 

[Guest]

Just be thankful that today's prices are what they are.

I can still remember when memory sold for about $50.00 per MB back in 1995

 

[madman322]

i guess this is the computer world's way of phasing out ddr2. I just hope that DDR3 starts to come down in price again once the ddr2 is out of the picture. But at that point maybe they'll be using DDR4. I guess only time will tell.

 

[terr281]

Well, one of the major problems for memory manufacturers is sourcing/manufacturing due to how the memory market evolved.

System memory, the largest part of the market, has gone down the DDR -> DDR2 -> DDR3 -> ? route.

Dedicated graphics memory, on the other hand, has gone down the path DDR -> DDR2 -> GDDR3 -> GDDR4 -> GDDR5 -> ?

As such, despite some of the details of manufacturing being the same for the two paths, some are not.

Actually, with luck, DDR4 will never exist... and system memory will jump to the GDDR path.

 

[ares1214]

why would you want that? enlighten me a little but i thought gddr5 was for graphics, not ram

 

[MCSmarties]

I agree with the OP, RAM prices have increased sharply. Including DDR3 prices!

Case in point: in July I bought 6GB of Patriot DDR3 tri-channel RAM, PC-10660 at Newegg for $94 (not including a $20 mail-in rebate).

The exact same RAM, which I was thinking of buying to bring the system to 12GB total, now costs a whopping $164!

Is this because the new Lynnfield CPUs are causing a lower demand in the long term for triple-channel memory, so manufacturers produce less of that RAM and prices go up?

Or is there just a "bubble" in RAM prices in general?

I'm really on the fence whether I should get the RAM now, or wait a few weeks. It's not very urgent but I worry that stocks will be even more depleted after the holiday season... and if Patriot stops producing that RAM, I'm screwed!

 

[madman322]

I'm in a similar situation, MC. I was going to build an i7 system in june but was convinced to wait until christmas. Thus, I noticed that since then the Ram seemed to be completely inflated in price. So if i were you, I would wait, at least until the christmas season is over and hope the prices begin to drop a little again.

 

[endorphines]

the ram industry was gearing up production in a big way prior the the economic problems, and then all of a sudden there was no demand and a large excess of production... hence rock bottom prices. they've shutdown alot of plants now, and demand is returning, hence the sharp increase in price. we'll probably see a drop in prices soon, but not to the lows we saw over the summer.

 

[Guest]

Plus don't forget Natural disasters and earth quakes which hit in certain regions also affected memory production too.

 

[student_sol]

The low prices are a results of the "chicken" game between the RAM manufacturers. Semiconductor industry characterized by heavy dependence on R&D for process efficiency. Improving the manufacture process to say 50nm -> 40nm could have almost 50-60% increase in yield of RAM, with lower power consumption and better performance. So industry leaders (Samsung and Hynix) who consistently uses a better process to manufacture RAM have a considerable price/performance advantage over others. They use this to bring down the RAM prices to a level which would be barely profitable to themselves, but at unacceptably low price for all others using less efficient manufacturing process. Thus the only way for the others to counter this is to start over-producing RAMs in a futile effort to bring down their cost per chip. This sparks a "chicken" game where prices drop like crazy and the winner takes everything. Samsung Semiconductor (again... for how many times already?) emerged as the victor in the last "chicken" game and was the only manufacturer to actually make a profit even during the price drops. During this time a couple of manufacturers went bankrupt and was bought by other manufacturers, to be ready to take on Samsung/Hynix once more. This is a unfair, harsh industry, where the leader continues to lead and take everything while the "losers" continue to trail and eventually die. We consumers just have to wait until their next "chicken" game for the price to drop. It's the perfect time to get RAMs

 

[bystander]

Of course I remember when it cost about $100 for 1 meg of ram (not gig).