DDR-II - How It Works

[DR]

It's about to arrive on the desktop in a big way and we'll have DDR-II modules and supporting boards to play with in the near future, to semi-evaluate performance before everything hits in Q2, so hopefully this article is of some use to you in thinking about the transition and what it means for memory performance in the future.

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...hpc3Rvcnk9LTI=

[Steve]

A nice article - covering things in enough detail (though I nearly glazed over at a couple of points, which means shame on me as I should understand it anyway.)

I'm gonna sit and watch as those before me buy DDR-II, so that I can learn from what happens.

[goden99]

Ummm A few things I am not sure off if someone would clear them up for me.

Hence wouldn't Dual Channel Memory have the same bandwidth as DDR II ?
Why not just get a chipset with DDR II with Dual Channel ? if they don't do that I see no point in getting DDR II if iIcan get a 875P Chipset with Two Sticks of DDR400 running Dual Channel for a lot cheaper than buying a new motherboard and new memory.
Not to mention the Latency on DDR II is higher than DDR I who wants DDR II ?

Only Advantage I see is 1.8V instead of 2.5~2.6V on regular DDR400 memory.

[Steve]

I think we'll have to have a dual channel DDR vs single channel DDRII showdown to see who's the victor.

I reckon they're both better at particular things.

[goden99]

The Latency in DDRII is really not impressive at all.
There is no point in faster memory if its latency is low.

I am sure we've all seen benchmarks of people having memory running at 200mhz 2-2-2-5 setting faster than people who have it at 230 3-3-3-9.

Hence DDRII 500 is going to be slower because its like CAS-4 or CAS-5 as the article said. I am very worried DDRII 500 would be equivalent to like DDR333 Dual Channel.

I don't understand thou. They lowered the voltage which should mean it should wait less for power to go back up to do a read or write.

I hope to see some DDRII Benchmarks soon.

[DR]

Goden what are you basing your facts on?

[Sumanji]

Urgh... timings like 4-4-4-8 will not be liked by AMD CPU's at all.

Hopefully Kingston, Corsair, OCZ etc will be able to cut that down to something like 2.5-3-3-6 with more voltage, better PCB technology etc?

Suman

[DR]

It will all come down to yields.... and of course the chipset tweakability

[blockers]

Good articul, i now understand it better which is always a good thing. Hopefully the big brands will be able to get the timings lower, exciting times coming up for computers....new graphics, new RAM, 64-bit. All good