- Back to homepage

DDR2 is overstretched beyond its Gigahertz limits

@ 2006/11/30

Now, in the famous press kit that Nvidia sent to the journalists on the Nforce 680i a month ago, for the first time, another new speed grade was mentioned - an 'upcoming version' of Corsair Dominator overclocker's memory, running at no less than PC9600, or DDR2-1200 throughput speed! And, there is even talk of extending the DDR2 spec to 1066MHz officially.

Realistically, you probably couldn't run that memory at this speed with anything less than 2.2 volts supply - far higher (and hotter) than the 1.8 volt specificiation of original DDR2 or the selected dies used on those DIMMs. In many cases, 2.3 volts are recommended, coming close to the old 2.5 volt DDR1 voltage levels. Are we going too far with DDR2, instead of early switching to the 1.5 volt DDR3 at the 1333MHz throughput?

Comment from Kougar @ 2006/12/01

Wow, I must second Thorgal. A spot on article from The Inquirer, this time.

I was even wondering the same thing about nVidia, their use of GDDR3 on G80 is doing exactly the same thing, they are pushing GDDR3 speeds into GDDR4 frequency territory, while ATI had the foresight to switch early on so they can use it where it would count the most, on a card that needs the raw bandwidth (Not to mention lower power draw

).

Intel actually had scheduled DDR3 chipsets for this fall, but pushed them back as they thought the market wasn't ready for it. So with Intel's upcoming Bearlake refresh this coming Spring, the top-end "X38" chipset will use DDR3-1333mhz memory, with the next Intel chipset wave bringing DDR3 support into the upper mainstream a year from now. Even the last chart from Intel I saw didn't peg DDR3 adoption to rise to significant levels until the end of 2007 though...

Comment from Rutar @ 2006/11/30

I spotted Kingston Value RAM for DDR2 800 frequency.

that makes me happy, because it is exactly what the market is missing

Comment from thorgal @ 2006/11/30

I must give it to the inquirer guys, they are spot on imo this time.

Only yesterday, I was writing something alongside these lines in a mail to Mushkin, who responded to our article by saying that they weren't aware that their warranty was lower than the competition (2.3V vs 2.4-2.45V). I answered them that it's getting out of control a little, because one manufacturer tries to outbid an other at the moment...

Comment from Rutar @ 2006/11/30

What is really ugly is probably the lack of on-die memory controller for Intel could make it much easier to switch.

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.