DDR or Rambus

Discussion in 'CPU, Motherboards and Memory' started by spaceghostctoc, Mar 16, 2002.

  1. spaceghostctoc

    spaceghostctoc Geek Trainee

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    To finilize the debate at work, i would like to know which ram is faster, from www.centon.com it says Rambus is 3x faster than pc100 and that ddr is only 2x faster than pc100, but it doesnt specifiy which ddr, 1600, 2100, 2400, or 2700. Out of the top of the line ddr ram, 2700 and rambus, which is faster. Any info would help. And just for kicks which would be better for all aroudn use of a pc, from severing to gaming, athlon XP or Intel 4.

    Thanks
    SG
     
  2. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    Yes, it's true Rambus is indeed faster than DDR, but it uses a very narrow data path.

    To put it in perspective, rambus is like a 2-lane highway with a speed limit of 100MPH. DDR is like a 4 lane highway with a speed limit of 50MPH. If speed is a major concern, Rambus is better, but if you need more data at a time, DDR is better, although functionally slower. Also, the P4's bus is only 100MHz but it's 'quad-pumped', which sorta equals 400MHz, but not requiring 400MHz RAM. To be fair, AMD is doing the same thing with their DDR bus, doubling 100 or 133MHz to 200 or 266MHz, respectively.

    Servers get a little more complicated: it has more to do with the chipsets available. Intel has Intel, Serverworks, and Via for servers. AMD has AMD and Via for servers. Via does have issues and while I don't have problems with them, I wouldn't be caught dead with a Via chipset in a real server. AMD does make nice chipsets, but they haven't really done a server chipset before, especially in the SMP arena. If you're factoring in a server capability, I would say Intel. If you just want home/gaming use, AMD is the better bet IMHO. For server stuff, Intel is best if you need AGP; if not Serverworks, while probably the most expensive chipsets out their, have killer bandwith.

    For an all around PC, you can choose between the harder to find AMD 760 and it's MP/MPX flavors, or the i850 (Rambus) or i845/D (SDRAM/DDR) for a relatively low cost server. The i860 gets up their in price, and will be a dual processor board.
     

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