DDR-II vs. GDDR3 : The Forgotten Features
 

Six years after the idea was created, DDR-II finally appears to make an entry in the marketplace. At the same time, the graphics version of the new standard, that is GDDR2 has already become obsolete, reasons being high power consumption along with thermal problems that negate the marginal performance increase found over the original DDR design.

In the graphics sector, the next generation of DDR, that is, GDDR3 has almost overnight become a main player, with a simplified design, lower power consumption and final riddance of some historical DRAM protocol baggage. The design improvements of GDDR3 compared to (G)DDR-II are extremely intuitive, which makes us wonder whether a similar transition could happen overnight in the system memory / desktop segment as well.

We have looked at some of the design features, especially with respect to On-Die-Termination and strobing that, in the case of DDR-II seem to be slightly off-topic and compare them with the respective GDDR3 solutions that appear more cost-effective and power-conserving. At this point it is too early to even provide a crystal-ball view of what will happen but we'll let some of the facts speak for themselves.

http://www.lostcircuits.com/memory/ddr3/