Dear Hexus Community! A Question on DDR2 Pricing

Hello all, i'm just writing to ask; if anyone knows: Is now a good time to buy DDR2 ? I've heard the prices are going up a bit -- and seen it first hand as the Corsair TwinX kit I was going to buy from Scan increased from £66 to £70.

However, I will be upgrading the rest of my PC mid-august in preparation for BioShock on the 24th and Crysis hopefully not too long after :P. So my real question is, will DDR2 (namely 6400 kits) be any cheaper in August, or will they be more expensive? I imagine a lot of people will be upgrading for the same games I am, and as DDR3 will be 'around' then, but not widespread i'm guessing due to the very expensive prices and loose latencies currently, I think DDR2 will still be in high demand?

Any comments or advice would be grealy appreciated :bowdown:.

Its hard to tell if it will drop any further, some has gone up, some has dropped a bit.

If you have the money now, and are worried, why not buy it now? If you wait til august and it has doubled, you will be miffed :D

Fabs are ramping up DDR 3, DDR 2 parts coming in at faster speeds, Intel and AMD, (hopefully), releasing next generation of processors, MB fabs releasing new MB with both DDR3 and faster bus DDR2 now, Back to school and Xmas buying season about to begin. Supply of PC6400 kits decreasing. Rebates ending. Prices increasing. Pull trigger soon.

I think now is a good time to buy. It has the potential to go up far more than it may go down in pure monetary terms (i.e, may drop another £5-10 for a 2GB kit, but could easily shoot up way more than that given where prices were 6 months ago).

Hehe, Almost poetic SMC.

I think I got an excellent deal on my giel Ultra Low Latency dual 2gb pc6400 4-4-4-12 for £65.00

A good brand, nice timings, fast bandwidth and a fair amout of memory (2gb) for all needs.

Make that your benchmark if you like.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mspacific

Hehe, Almost poetic SMC.

I think I got an excellent deal on my giel Ultra Low Latency dual 2gb pc6400 4-4-4-12 for £65.00

A good brand, nice timings, fast bandwidth and a fair amout of memory (2gb) for all needs.

Make that your benchmark if you like.

---

GEIL PC2-6400 DDR2 - 2x1 GB CL 4-4-4-12 - GX22GB6400UDC

These seem nice, my only concern is that it's random to what manufacturer of memory chips you get on them (I think?).

I'm planning to get:

Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC2 6400 DDR2

Heard good reviews about it and seems they easily go to PC8500 at 5-5-5-15 :embarrassed:.

£10 shipping? for 2 sticks of ram? the robbing sods :lol:

Aye it's quite a bit, but £73.98 total is still quite a bit cheaper than the 4-4-4-12 corsair modules @ £94ish and i think about £4 shipping from scan.

That ram is about £80 delivered direct from Crucial. Itll probably be genuine as well :)

:heckle::heckle:£72 delivered here when in stock......

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...365,4294955840

I will be buying soon as, as mentioned, it could go down a £10 or go up £60 ...for once the odds arent in favour of waiting :) Also comsider that system sales will only go up after the intel price cuts forecast for July22, and we all know about supply and demand :)


f

p.s. - Hi Phil! :handbag:

How about £72.79 from Dabs with free shipping :)

EDIT: funnelhead beat me to it!

Yep, I ordered some corsair ram from dabs, a while back, and it said 1-2 days, and 4 weeks later it still said 1-2 days.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Clunk

Yep, I ordered some corsair ram from dabs, a while back, and it said 1-2 days, and 4 weeks later it still said 1-2 days.

---

Did you ever get it or did you have to cancel the order?

Cancelled in the end, scan got them in stock.

Mmm in the end I didn't buy the crucial from ebay, instead i've seen this:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/product...roductID=14777

What do you reckon? (those still on at this hour! *Clunk*) Seems a great deal at a total of £65.73 Inc. VAT and delivery :).

EDIT: Hehe I do hope that eventually they get the RAM in stock... It was on 1-2days for about 5 days, then to "Due soon" for about 3 days, then "On Order, delivery overdue" or something for a day, and now to 1-2days again ^^. As I said i'm not in a rush, but just musing myself over it -- oh well -- guess it's not their fault they didnt get the delivery on time!

Reputable brand..... will be fine @ stock for sure. According to here it uses spectek chips.... i dont think you'll get an amazing OC out of them. But it's a cheap price for 4-4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nemz0r

Mmm in the end I didn't buy the crucial from ebay, instead i've seen this:

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/product...roductID=14777

What do you reckon? (those still on at this hour! *Clunk*) Seems a great deal at a total of £65.73 Inc. VAT and delivery :).

---

I'm not a fan of Geil ram.

I know quite a few people that bought the Geil stuff when it was at its cheapest from ocuk/md and a lot of them had a DOA stick, or it died shortly after installation.

Others seem to like them though :)

Reading around a bit more most people are getting 930MHz or so out of the Geil chips at quite high latencies such as 5-5-8-18 or something like that. Doesn't seem ideal. Really i'm looking for some chips that I can get to 1067ish at 5-5-5-15, without paying the 8500 premium :P.

How about these OCZ platinum? http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(16746)...R2-PC6400.aspx Only a little more expensive than the Geil :), yet still under £70 with shipping :D.

edit: Checked some reviews for these OCZ sticks, seem they get to around the 900-930MHz mark too. I guess i'll try and get my hands on some of the nice Crucial Ballistix then :P.

It's worth spending £72 on Crucial ballistix as they use the Micron D9GMH chips and should easily clock to 1200mhz ;)

I took the plunge and finally ordered some memory! Thanks to funnelhead and Phil-P for the dabs link. I'm not in a hurry because, as said -- i'll be building the rest of my system in august or around then. So hopefully in a whole month dabs will have gotten them in stock :P.

Anyways, thanks for all the input guys, really appreciated :)!

Also, if dabs don't get the memory in stock for a loong time, the positive thing will be -- I'll see what happens to the memory prices! If they go up, I still get the price I ordered at, if they go down I'll reorder at the lower price :embarrassed:.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH :lol:

When buying RAM, never ever EXPECT your RAM to hit the sppeds you see in reviews, if you do, you will probably be disappointed, especially with brands like Corsair that hand out review samples that have D9 (for example) chips, and when you get yours, it has Promos, or Elpida chips that dont overclock well at all.

Bottom line is - Ignore the speeds that reviewers get (most of the time), and concentrate on what the majority of normal users are getting, because that is most likely what you will get.

The other thing is, if you *need* PC2-8500 (1066Mhz) RAM, then buy PC2-8500 RAM. Buying PC2-5300 RAM, on the assumption that it will hit 1066Mhz, or even 1200Mhz is just foolish, regardless of the type of chips the RAM uses.

Suppose that you bought some of ths PC2-5300 super ram and it wont go past 667Mhz, then what do you do? There's nothing wrong with it, so you cant send it back, and chances are, that you paid around £30 more for the pleasure.

I'm not saying that no PC2-5300 RAM will overclock well, what I'm saying is, that NOT ALL WILL, and it is a gamble...luck of the draw :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OV3RCLOCK3R

It's worth spending £72 on Crucial ballistix as they use the Micron D9GMH chips and should easily clock to 1200mhz ;)

---

is that from personal experience?

f

Sorry, I should have said :(. I don't explicitly need 8500 speeds, but I was looking for some 6400 with a high chance to get there. The Crucial sticks from reading around on user comments seem to usually get there, but if they don't, np. I don't mind paying £5 more for that higher chance, however the 2gb 8500 kits @ £120 or so are a bit out of my price range for memory.

edit: Anyways, when I do get them, and the rest of my system in July or August i'll report back and tell you all what I do get out of them :D.

If you are buying in august, theres not much point in speccing it up now, prices will have changed and new stuff will be out by then :)

Well im sitting here in my dressing gown waiting for my 4gb of 8500 ballistix to turn up :D and i wont be buying the rest of the rig till the price cuts.... but it seems to me that if crucial are putting their DIRECT prices up, then soon all the shops they supply will follow, i.e prices are back on the up.

This article on RAM pricing over at digitimes.

DRAM contract price stops falling in 2H June

http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20070622VL200.html

hth

f

I don't believe this, but Crucials prices have jus gone up AGAIN

this morning the 2gb kit 8500 was £120, up from £105 a few days ago. This evening it's gone up to £134

Heh I kinda owned myself. Been checking price on dabs each day, today it fell by £4 so I cancelled my order and reordered -- alas shipping isn't free anymore -- so i'm ending up paying 50pence more! *Bonks self on the head* :surprised:

Soo... the RAM came yesterday, I wouldn't bother posting here with a useless bump to say that, but it was quite amusing. When I first saw the box it raised an eyebrow... think... an A3 sized box about 4" deep. Now, this is for 2 sticks of RAM...

So I opened up the box, and inside, was another box, a standard tiny crucial box (in comparison:lol:) , about 6" long, 3" wide and 3" deep.

Sorry I don't have a digicam to take pics, but... imagine this:

http://www.hardwarelogic.com/article...l_Contents.jpg

Note the size of the box compared to the ram sticks...barely any longer.

Now imagine that in a box with a top and bottom the size of an A3 sheet of paper :D.

That was like The Blair Witch Project of RAM reviews :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nemz0r

Now imagine that in a box with a top and bottom the size of an A3 sheet of paper :D.

---

My box from dabs was more A4 sized - I was hoping they'd popped an extra couple sticks in just for good measure, but no such luck :undecided

So is it going up irretrevably? Because if so maybe I should buy it at Dabs while the price holds...

Probably not, micron and others are churning up DDR3 chips hard and it's the summer so there will be a heap of people buying, more than likely you'll see the prices coming back down in the Autumn after supply stabilises and demand goes down.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thorsson

So is it going up irretrevably? Because if so maybe I should buy it at Dabs while the price holds...

---

Personally, I would buy now (and I did).

For example, 2x1GB Crucial DDR2-800 currently costs about £70 from dabs. It may go down to say £65, but it could easily go up to £100+ too (look at the current price on Crucial's website).

Demand is set to rise as Intel CPU prices are dropping and system manufacturers obtain stock to build up for Christmas, and supply could fall as suppliers switch manufacturing resources to making DDR3 memory. These are perfect conditions for prices to rise. Already it's getting difficult to find any Crucial stock for DDR2-800 or DDR2-1066 modules.

I wouldn't be to upset if I bought now and in a month prices had gone down another £5-10, but I would be gutted if I waited and they were £30-50 more expensive. Simply put, you stand to lose more than you stand to gain.

Yeah, I feel that your are right. Time to flash the cash. :telephone:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thorsson

Yeah, I feel that your are right. Time to flash the cash. :telephone:

---

Don't blame me if the prices drop though :lol:

I can't believe they'll get any lower than this. And I couldn't find them anywhere else for less than £5 more a Gig. Anyway it's too late now. I've ordered 4 of the suckers. :rockon2: