Duel channel DDR & DDR2 - R they the same thing?

[Dorza]

As title please. If not what are the differences. Ive been out of the hardware game for some time and i feel theres a need to catch up. Am i right to think that DDR3 will be around in the not too distant future. im sure i read somthing about it. If so whats different about that. Thanks for any info

[SilentDeath]

dual channel silmply means u have 2 contolers for 2 sticks of mem, or more, creating a 128bit bus, instead of 64bit in single channel. this isnt too noticable on amd cpus where the fsb is dual pumped, but on quad pumped p4s it makes nice increase.

ddr2 is the new one, its just starting to appear in gfx cards, and system ram will come next. the standard of ddr2 is not as good from some points of view, as the standard means crap timings (cas = 3?), but companys like corsair will probably make low latency sticks.
equally clocked ddr1 should perform better than ddr2 becuase of the timings, but it costs more to make (to get high mhz anyway)

long time since i read about it so i may be slightly wrong

[garath]

read somewhere that ddr2 heats up much faster than normal ddr ????

[SilentDeath]

that would be cos its new, manufacturing of chips takes a while for them to perfect, they will start make ones that run cooler soon, so they can achive higher clocks

[Dorza]

Thanks for the post. I can never remember what CAS stands for and what it means? I know CAS 2 is better than CAS 3 for example, but what exactly does it mean? Is it the amount of info that flows through the ram?

[SilentDeath]

no, cas = colum address strobe. its one of the delays thats important to get the right data from the chips, as it takes time for them to select the right address. cas makes the most impact out of the timings, theres a few more that i cant remember names of...
my timings are 7-3-3-2.5, starting at left makes least performace difference and most on the right. for example at 3 cas i could run the others at 3-2-2-3, but that would probably be worse.
ecause of differences in ddr2 u need worse timings, but it makes chips cheaper to make which give higher clock rates.