VisionTek of videocard fame is getting into the business of selling high end DDR3 memory kits. It's puzzling why a company not already selling RAM would want to suddenly jump in at this point in time, but VisionTek insists it's researched the memory market with due diligence and determined that it's a solid business to get into. The company says it will "only source and sell the best memory," referencing chips with tight timings for high performance and stable parts for overclocked systems. Bring it on.

Micron this week announced financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter and 2011 fiscal year ended September 1, 2011, and the numbers aren't pretty. The company's revenue from DRAM in the third quarter dropped 12 percent compared to Q3, a slump Micron said was the result of declines in the average selling prices. Revenue from sales of NAND flash products picked up some of the slack and grew 11 percent, but doesn't have enough volume to make up for the downturn in DRAM.

We've been monitoring the sorry state of the DRAM market closely for some time now, and whenever there's an update, it's almost always bad news for manufacturers. In recent weeks, it's also been bad for consumers who've grown accustomed to rock bottom pricing. Seemingly faced with no other choice, DRAM makers have started to cut production, and it's no longer just one or two companies.

You'd probably have a better shot at turning a profit selling ice cubes to Eskimos than churning out DRAM chips at today's prices. That's less of an exaggeration than you might think, and to cope with continually falling prices, some DRAM makers have decided to scale back operations until chip prices bounce back up.