is DDR RAM worth it?

[bobbinbrisco 0]

i know DDR RAM is faster than SD RAM but is it really worth ur money to buy DDR RAM- just becasue its faster? i heard it is heaps more expensive but little performance improvement.

[GHackmann 0]

It's actually the other way around. DDR SDRAM costs about 10% more to manufacture than SDR SDRAM, and you get a 20% or more speed boost in real world applications, and an even bigger boost in some cases, like 3D games.

 

You might have heard about DDR SRDAM GeForce cards, which is a whole different story. Yes, they're a lot more expensive than their SDR cousins (though not as much as they used to be), and most of the performance benefit comes at high resolutions. But the only reason why manufacturers charge a lot more than the SDR versions is simply because they can; the demand's there, and people will pay an inflated price for cards that only cost a little more to manufacture.

[STi Sev 0]

Quote:

Originally posted by bobbinbrisco:
i know DDR RAM is faster than SD RAM but is it really worth ur money to buy DDR RAM- just becasue its faster? i heard it is heaps more expensive but little performance improvement.

Hellllllllllllllllll yeah
DDR Ram is the future.. wooo!

[FKTOAST 0]

DDR ram is faster than any other ram out there but here is the catch. Right now, the only cards available with DDR ram have the NVIDIA chipset on them. The NVIDIA chipset which uses the Geforce or Geforce2 name out performs any other chipsets on the market as far as megatexels per second and memory clock speeds. I am one for performance. I like high performance technology. As a matter of fact I love high performance in about everything that I am involved in. One thing I have learned is performance and combatility and hand-in-hand and if you dont have 100% compatibility then your performance is worth nothing. This is how I feel about NVIDIA and how they only make there chipsets and not the cards so when manufacturers develop drivers for the NVIDIA chipset you end up with many different drivers that make your performance and compatibility go up and down depending on what driver version you are using and what game you are playing and what version of direct x you have installed and so on.

 

3DFX has there shit together. They may not have the fastest card on the market but it works with everything. There is a whole lot more support for it and certified drivers by 3DFX are few and far between because compatibility is so great. My advice is to go with the 4500 or 5500 and be happy with more SDRAM but less performance which is high in compatibility.

 

Getting to the point about DDR ram. I think maybe down the road it will be worth it but right now, go with a quality product so you dont have to spend time installing a different driver for your video card because you want to play Quake III instead of Doom III (which will be coming out soon, from a friend at ID Software) because the 6.47 NVIDIA drivers work better on that particular game than the 7.17 NVIDIA drivers.

 

Buy 3DFX

 

 

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Frank

A+, Windows 98 and NT MCP

[clutch 1]

DDR RAM compensates for a narrower bus width in some cases (hence the wonderous fill rate at higher resolutions). It will also be a nice feature for motherboards when the mobos actually come out. As far as 3Dfx having their shit together, I don't know about that. They bought the worst vendor that made boards (hence the cheapest). It seemed like a great idea for quality control, but it didn't quite fly. Now, they are paying for it by shutting down their investment. In addition, they are pawning off the V5 6000 that was supposed to kick everybody's collective ass to a company that will only provide them for institutional uses (simulators and arcade equipment). Nvidia keeps coming out with nice features and better performing drivers with almost (7.17=boooo) every release, and they have one helluva schedule that they stick to for release. In addition, I have seen some old benchmarks that show the 5500 performing as 2 32MB cards, instead of 1 64MB card (large texturing runs and such). Now, 3dfx kicks major ass in their AA and what have you, but with production delays, recalls, and the pulling of the flagship product that was promised forever, I would hardly call it a company with its "shit" together.

 

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Regards,

 

clutch

[sapiens74 0]

Ati makes a DDR version of the Radeon BTW

[FKTOAST 0]

Excellent post Clutch! I agree with your statements about 3DFX.

 

So are you saying that DDR ram is worth it?

 

And am I wrong by saying that the driver releases for NVIDIA chipsets suck or have I just missed th boat and its not as painful as I might of stated?

 

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Frank

A+, Windows 98 and NT Certified Technical Support Representitive

[clutch 1]

DDR RAM kicks major @ss IF you are running hi-res/hi bit-depth applications where fill rate is more important. I am a firm believer in DDR RAM. I, like you, see that there is a future in it. But I also see its use in the present as well. Any benchmark that you will see in games favor the DDR RAM chipset as soon as you hit 1024x168 at whatever bit depth. It also scales well in scenes that have a sharp change in complexity requiring more fill rate. For example, Timedemo 1 where the player being followed stands behind another, shoots him in the back with a rail gun, then shoots into the crowd. Run that demo on a GeForce SDR, then the DDR, and will see a big change due to the dramatic demand change at that moment. I run my GeForce SDR at 800x600@16bit so I can maintain an *avg* of 100+ fps. When I go to 1024x768@32 bit, that particular scene makes the card crawl with that wonderful explosion of gore (no, not Gore, FL wouldn't be that lucky) and guts.

 

Another reason why I dig DDR RAM is like what was stated earlier, the price is coming down, and the complex processors that are coming out really need all the Fill Rate support they can get from memory. All you have to do is overclock a GeForce once, and you will see what I mean. If you O/C the proc, there is almost no gain, but O/C the memory, and you can see tremendous gains. Obviously the proc has a lot more to give, and DDR RAM can give it. I *believe* that the V5 5500 has a 128-bit RAM interface, and with 2 procs running 32MB each, it would seem to be great. But evidentally the complexity of SLI (and cost to keep up with nVidia) is bearing great strain on 3Dfx. I would imagine that's why the 4-way superstud isn't showing up for consumers as the cost is just too high. The GeForce2 Ultra is only a suped up version of the GTS with higher clock speed (proc and mem) and runs amazingly fast. If the V5500 could scale that well with a change in memory speed (try to find faster SDRAM in that quantity/price point, HAH!), I would imagine that 3Dfx would have done so to fill the void until Rampage could show up.

 

I wont say that you are wrong, but I will say that our opinions differ.

 

 

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Regards,

 

clutch