Report Paints Depressing Sales Numbers For DRAM Makers
The Bankruptcy of Elpida still carries the hope that balance in supply and demand will return in the DRAM industry.
However, GBI Research believes that the DRAM industry is caught up in a "vicious cycle" that forces full production volume to pay for past expenses, but results in oversupply that kills pricing.
In 2010, DRAM makers recorded revenues of $37.31 billion, and only $29.47 billion in 2011. For 2012, the researchers project only $29 billion. At the same time, smartphones and tablets promote a scenario where unit numbers are exploding, but capacities are shrinking. In 2010, 16.39 billion units were shipped. In 2012, the number will be almost double - 32 million devices.
To curb falling prices, DRAMeXchange reported that DRAM makers will be forced to cut their production as prices are forecast to further decline in August - after a dramatic 7 percent. A 2 Gb DDR3 chip currently sells for $1.08.

/joke
Definitely. Seems like the main determining factor right now for memory is simply how much you have. If they actually introduce let's say DDR4 that has a maybe 25% performance boost then we might see people upgrading.
not to be picky but that's a 100% increase :-)
I think Haswell-EP (Xeons) is rumoured to get DDR4, and Skylake for consumer DDR4.
that isn't bad... need to bookmark this so i have a reference for future ssd debates.
I don't think Rambus has even a full-time staff of researchers anymore. Their offices are probably being occupied by full-time lawyers.
Rambus has their memory in use by the PS3, among other devices. I don't think that their suffering in the console gaming community, granted they're not around the PC gaming community these days.
With instructions such as AVX and all getting more common use, RAM can quickly become a huge bottle-neck in some applications.
Someone doesn't know the difference between GB and Gb. A 2Gb DDR3 chip is actually 256MiB. That DDR3 chip costs $8.64 or so per GiB aka something like $7.45 per GB. Be glad that SSDs aren't even nearly that expensive these days.
What I want to know is that if a 256MiB chip costs $1.08, then why can we buy 2x4GB RAM kits (they use 256MiB chips) for less than $8.64 per GiB? Heck, a 2x4GiB kit can often be had as cheap as $40 on Newegg, but that's only about $5 per GiB. Maybe RAM module manufacturers get some sort of discount or something like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XDR2_DRAM
but I do agree with the sentiment of the first couple of posters. Ive got 6gb of ram and I have no problems in games... well now that I upgraded my gpu that is.