Memory

AMD Launches DDR3-2133 Memory Kit, Takes Aim at Gamers

Paul Lilly — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:59:43 +0000

New RAM from AMD doesn't shun Intel users.

AMD on Wednesday announced its new Radeon RG2133 Gamer Series Memory and Radeon RAMDisk 4.1 software. According to AMD, it's RG2133 kit is the only memory on the entire planet that offers both XMP and AMP memory profiles in the same package, so no matter which platform you're rolling with -- Intel or AMD -- you can still benefit from AMD's pre-configured overclocking settings.

"AMD Radeon RG2133 Gamer Series Memory is armed with features designed to outperform the competition on any task," said Roman Kyrychynskyi, product director, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. "Designed with multi-platform compatibility in mind, the AMD Radeon RG2133 brings cutting-edge technology, as well as uncompromising quality and compatibility for PC gamers."

Marketing spin aside, he RG2133 kit is 16GB (4x4GB) and rated to run at 2133MHz with 10-11-11-30 timings at 1.65V. That's the fastest memory kit AMD currently offers, and like the ones before it, we believe Patriot Memory is the one building the kits.

The RG2133 kit costs $155 and comes with a license for AMD's RAMDisk 64GB utility.

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War on Korean Peninsula Could Have "Catastrophic" Consequences to Electronics Market

Paul Lilly — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:47:50 +0000

Korea is a major supplier of electronics parts.

Analysts at IHS iSuppli spent some time pondering what would happen if current tensions in Korea escalate to the point of a war on the Korean peninsula, and what they determined is that it could theoretically cripple the global electronics business. South Korea is a major cog in the electronics supply chain, as it accounts for half of the world's DRAM output, two-thirds of NAND flash manufacturing, and 70 percent of the world's tablet display.

IHS iSuppli says chaos would ensue if war were to break out in the region, and that it's such a serious threat, some forward-thinking technology firms are planning for such a contingency in the same way they prepare for other natural and man-made disasters that could negatively impact their businesses.

"South Korea now plays a more important role than ever in the global electronics business. And with the supply chain having become more entwined and connected, a significant disruption in any region will impact the entire world. Because of this, it is important for companies to understand the magnitude of South Korea’s role in the global electronics market—and to prepare for any contingencies," said Mike Howard, senior principal analyst for DRAM & memory at IHS.

Such a scenario could bring about a quick and significant impact on consumers. According to Howard, even just a disruption of six months could halt the shipment of hundreds of millions of mobile phones and tens of millions of PCs.

Food for thought.

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Adata Launches a DDR3 2600MHz Memory Kit, Tells Games 'Come Get Some'

Paul Lilly — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:22:44 +0000

Adata may be targeting the wrong audience.

The folks at Adata announced an insanely fast DDR3 memory kit that can hit speeds up to 2600MHz, though it's interesting the company is taking aim at gamers instead of overclockers. It's true that PC gamers have a played a pivotal role in driving demand for increasingly faster components, but it seems to us this is the kind of kit a professional overclocker would have more interest in.

Regardless of the target audience, Adata's new XPG Gaming v2.0 Series DDR3 2600G DRAM 8GB modules come in dual-channel kits "designed and engineered to bring optimum performance" to Intel's Ivy Bridge processors and the Z77 platform, Adata says.

The modules support Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) verson 1.3 and are rated to run at up to 2600MHz with latency timings of 11-13-13-35 at 1.66V (XMP Profile 1). These 16GB kits (2x8GB) feature 2-ounce copper 8-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs) and Adata's Thermal Conductive Technology (TCT) to keep cool.

No word yet on price or availability, though as a point of reference, you can find Adata XPG Gaming v2.0 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-2400 kits selling for $160 street.

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Costly DRAM is Driving Up Graphics Card Prices

Paul Lilly — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:48:41 +0000

Even with prices going up, it's still a great time to be a PC gamer.

Are you planning to build a gaming PC for the summer? If so, you might want to get started early in order to get the most bang for your buck. Yesterday we told you that desktop DRAM pricing is on the rise as contract chip prices have already jumped 50 percent in 2013, spiking 20 percent in March alone, and now we're hearing that graphics cards are getting more expensive.

Once again, you can blame memory chip makers. According to Digitimes and its sources within the graphics card business, several video card vendors have increased retail prices for products made with DDR3 memory in the DIY market. Prices are up 10-15 percent, the news and rumor site says.

Those same sources say it's unlikely graphics card pricing will drop in the next six months, though it's not all bad news. To help offset the rising retail costs, vendors are getting more aggressive in their promotions, some of which we've already seen. AMD, for example, has given away some sweet triple AAA titles as part of its ongoing Never Settle bundles. It's been rumored that the next Never Settle bundle will include Battlefield 4.

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Contract Prices for Desktop DRAM Spiking Sharply in 2013

Paul Lilly — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:21:00 +0000

DRAM makers are shifting focus from desktop RAM to mobile memory.

Growing demand for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is prompting memory chip suppliers to commit more capacity to mobile DRAM parts. With only so much capacity to go around, DRAM production for PCs is dropping, resulting in a sharp spike in contract prices. What all this means is that if you spot a good deal on RAM and are in need of an upgrade, go ahead and pull the trigger.

Prices for desktop DRAM aren't likely to go down any time soon, and in fact contract prices for DRAM chips have risen more than 50 percent since the beginning of 2013, Digitimes reports. Prices spiked nearly 20 percent in March alone and show no signs of slowing down.

The reduced output of PC memory chips means higher prices at retail. To wit, DRAMeXchange noted that early March contract prices for 2GB and 4GB DDR3 modules averaged $13.75 and $23, respectively. Those values represent increases of 22 percent and 16.5 percent on the supplier side, which ultimately get passed on to the consumer.

Image Credit: Flickr (Daniel Dionne)

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Corsair's Insanely Fast Vengeance Extreme RAM is Crazy Expensive

Paul Lilly — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:10:31 +0000

How much would you be willing to pay for an 8GB DDR3-3000MHz memory kit?

Give Corsair props for its new Vengeance Extreme 8GB dual-channel DDR3 memory kit consisting of two 4GB modules, which qualifies as the world's fastest rated PC memory at 3,000MHz. It also boasts latency settings of 12-14-14-36 at 1.65V, not bad for a kit of this caliber. Not fast enough? Corsair includes a Kingpin Cooling memory cooler for overclockers who want to use liquid nitrogen (LN2) to goose even faster frequencies out of these sticks. Let's talk price.

After you're done giving Corsair props for its new memory kit, you'll have to hand over a king's ransom if you want to roll like royalty -- $750 to be exact. That's $93.75 per gigabyte. Pick up your jaw, there are couple of reasons why this kit costs so much.

The first reason is that they're hand-built modules that undergo a rigorous internal four-stage screening process performed by Corsair engineers on select Intel Z77-based motherboards. Secondly, supply is "extremely limited." According to Corsair, fewer than one in 50 memory ICs have the chops to run at 3,000MHz.

"We are focused on helping enthusiasts and overclockers push the boundaries of PC performance," said Thi La, Senior VP and GM of Memory and Enthusiast Component Products at Corsair. "Our engineering team's hard work has led to new performance optimization techniques for memory, which we are pleased to debut in our new Vengeance Extreme memory."

The 8GB Corsair Vengeance Extreme is available now only an Corsair's website.

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Facebook Ditches DRAM, Flaunts Flash-based McDipper

Paul Lilly — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:25:00 +0000

The solution to pricey DRAM is memcached for flash.

You can stuff your home system full of DRAM without putting a hurt on your bank account, but when you're talking about servers on the scale of what's needed to keep Facebook up and running, things tend to get expensive. It's for this reason that Facebook has decided to reduce its dependance on DRAM. In its place, the social networking site built a data cache that runs on flash memory.

It's called McDipper and it's a memcache-compatible flash-based cache server. The draw for Facebook is that flash provides up to 20 times the capacity per server and still supports tens of thousands of operations per second, so it's essentially a no-brainer.

"We serve over 150 Gb/s from McDipper forward caches in our CDN. To put this number in perspective, it's about one library of congress (10 TB) every 10 minutes. We do this with a relatively small set of servers, and we're very pleased with McDipper's performance on our CDN," Facebook explains.

According to Facebook, McDipper can reduce the number of deployed servers in some pools by as much as 90 percent while still delivering more than 90 percent of "get responses" with sub-millisecond latencies.

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PC Memory Prices Continue to Rise

Paul Lilly — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:49:13 +0000

4GB memory modules jumped in price by more than 11 percent last month, DRAMeXchange says.

Anyone remember when a 2GB overclocking kit would run a couple hundred dollars? Those days are long gone, replaced by the current landscape in which you can scoop up a 32GB DDR3 memory kit for around $150 or $160. DRAM prices are dirt cheap, as they have been for some time now, and it's taken a toll on DRAM makers. According to DRAMeXchange, top tier memory makers continue to reduce shipments of commodity DRAM to drive up prices, and it's working.

The average price for a 4GB module rose by 11.11 percent in January, a "rare occurrence in the past few years due to continually weak demand," DRAMeXchange says. Granted, you're not likely to notice unless you've been following the prices of DRAM, and 4GB modules specifically, which hit a high of $18 in the commodity market in January (they street for around $23 in the retail sector).

OEM PC makers have certainly noticed, but the price bump is a secondary concern to their top priority, which is to secure their supply source.

"PC makers are showing a desire to gradually increase inventory levels, and they are turning to module makers that they have not cooperated with as much in the past," DRAMeXchange explains. "Thus, the proportion of supply from module makers is rising, with some deals closing even higher than contract prices and approaching spot prices. The highest priced transaction was conducted at US$20, a good sign for contract prices."

Based on the above, DRAMeXchange expects further increases in price throughout the first quarter of 2013.

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Adata Announces Tiny Gem-Like DashDrive Durable UD310 USB Flash Drive

Paul Lilly — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:56:16 +0000

DRAM module and flash memory player Adata revealed a tiny USB flash drive with a big name. It's the "DashDrive Durable UD310 USB Flash Drive," which we'll go ahead and refer to as DashDrive from here on out. Shaped and themed like a sparkling gem, the DashDrive is rugged thanks to a special manufacturing process that makes it both water and impact resistant.

"The UD310 is manufacturing through a special chip-on-board (COB) process, resulting in high water and impact resistance for the drive," Adata explains. "It is engineered to be of the utmost quality and reliability, and further guaranteed by Adata's lifetime warranty."

The shape of the DashDrive lends itself to being left plugged into a laptop or desktop without taking up a ton of space or leaving you to worry about messing up your USB port (or flash drive) if you bump into the drive with your leg or otherwise knock into it.

It ships in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities. Unfortunately, it's limited to USB 2.0 (no love for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 spec), though the drives do come with a free download of Adata's proprietary UFDtoGo software.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Texas Instrument's 4MB Flash Device Can Withstand the Heat (Up to 210C)

Paul Lilly — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:35:49 +0000

Texas Instruments today unveiled what it claims is the industry's first high-temperature, nonvolatile Flash memory device for harsh environments. The SM28VLT32-HT has an operational capacity of 4MB and has been qualified to work in extreme situations ranging in temperature from -55C to +210C. At either end of the spectrum, TI says its 4MB part is good for at least 1,000 hours of operating life.

A few scenarios TI identified as ideal for this sort of thing include oil and gas exploration, heavy industrial, and avionics. Regardless of the situation, TI says its new devices can save companies money by eliminating the need for costly up-screening and qualification testing of industrial grade components, since TI has already done both of those.

The chip is available in either a ceramic flat pack or in Known Good Die (KGD), allowing for small package integration into multi-chip modules for systems with limited board space.

TI's SM28VLT32-HT is sampling now and will be available in volume quantities in the first quarter of next year.

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Crucial Touts More Headspace with Ballistix Low Profile RAM

Paul Lilly — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:45:46 +0000

Life is hard, play short. No, that's not Nike's new slogan, but Crucial may want to adopt it to promote its new Ballistic Low Profile (LP) memory kits. Crucial's LP modules are not only shorter than regular sized memory kits, they're also between 15 percent and 35 percent smaller than some of the LP kits its competitors are using, the company claims. Another claim Crucial makes is that its LP kits deliver the same performance benefits of regular sized Ballistix memory modules.

"Crucial Ballistix LP memory delivers all the benefits users have come to expect from Crucial high-performance memory – just in a smaller package," said Jeremy Mortensen, senior worldwide product manager, Crucial. "While other low profile offerings on the market provide some clearance, Crucial Ballistix LP memory delivers a true low profile and low power design to give users more clearance around their CPU coolers, while using less power for increased energy efficiency."

One of the main benefits of using LP RAM is that it creates more room for hulking CPU heatsinks that you might to use when overclocking your system. Smaller memory sticks also allow more air to pass through, though in most cases, it's probably a negligeable benefit.

Crucial says its Ballistix LP memory is availble in a variety of pouplar DDR3L speeds and up to 8GB in density.

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RAM Gone Wild: Overclocker Pushes G.Skill TridentX Kit to 3,900MHz

Paul Lilly — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:13:04 +0000

Memory maker G.Skill is laying claim to the "world's fastest RAM" after an overclocker goosed the company's TridentX Extreme Performance memory kit to 1,950MHz (3,900MHz effective). Whether you want to qualify that as the world's fastest RAM is up to you (and clearly G.Skill does), but it is a new memory frequency world record, so there are some well deserved bragging rights to go around.

Overclocker "Christian Ney" achieved the world record just a few days after another overclocker, "HiCookie," first broke the record with the same kit. HiCookie achieved 1,677MHz (3,354MHz effective) using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H motherboard and Intel Core i7 3770K processor.

Christian Ney trumped HiCookie's frequency using an AMD system with a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard and A8-3870K processor. In both cases, a healthy dose of liquid nitrogen was required to keep everything cool.

"Despite being the world's fastest RAM manufacturer, G.Skill will continue to strive for first-class quality at competitive pricing to the market," said Bill Wang, VP at G.Skill.

Gee, good to know G.Skill isn't hanging its hat up and calling it quits.

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Down in the Dumps DRAM Market Will See Little Relief from Windows 8

Paul Lilly — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:56:42 +0000

Historically speaking, if there's one thing memory chip makers could count on, it's that a new operating system from Microsoft would lead to double-digit percentage increases in quarterly DRAM shipments. That is, until now. According to IHS iSuppli, Windows 8 will have a positive impact in DRAM shipments, but quarterly growth this time around is expected to stay in single-digit territory.

IHS iSuppli predicts an 8 percent rise in DRAM shipments during the fourth quarter compared to the third. That figure takes into account DRAM for PCs, smartphones, and tablets. Why the sudden change? Part of the reason is because Windows 8 isn't a resource hog.

"The release of a new Microsoft OS traditionally has been accompanied by more advanced system requirements, which then fuels growth in the DRAM market as more bits are shipped," said Clifford Leimbach, analyst for memory demand forecasting at IHS. "However, starting with Windows 7 and continuing with Windows 8, Microsoft has taken a leaner approach with its operating systems, maintaining the same DRAM requirements as before. Meanwhile, consumers are continuing to eschew new PC purchases in the fourth quarter, with Windows 8 not expected to change this situation."

DRAM demand was at its highest when Microsoft released Windows 2000. At the time, DRAM shipments jumped 49 percent sequentially. That number has steadily dropped with each new OS. The launch of Windows XP propelled DRAM shipments by 41 percent, while Vista and Windows 7 saw DRAM shipments increase sequentially by around 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively. IHS iSuppli says the rate of growth in DRAM shipments in the fourth quarter will be the lowest it's been among all operating systems dating back to Windows 3.1, covering a span of more than two decades.

"All told, PCs will not be as important to the overall DRAM market moving forward," IHS iSuppli says. "PC share in the DRAM space dipped below 50 percent for the first time earlier this year, while alternative devices using DRAM—such as smartphones and media tablets—are raising their usage and DRAM market share."

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Kingston Adds a 'Predator' to HyperX Memory Family

Paul Lilly — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:53:05 +0000

It's too bad for Kingston there's not an award for 'Best DDR3 RAM Memory Name', because if there was, the company's new Predator modules would be a shoe-in. And then wouldn't it be awesome if Corsair or another competitor came out with an Aliens system memory line? Ah, but we digress. Killer name aside, Predator represents the newest addition to Kingston's HyperX memory family, and it takes direct aim at "extreme enthusiasts and overclockers," the company says.

HyperX Predator modules don a more aggressive suit of armor to dissipate heat than previous HyperX variants, underneath which sit cherry-picked memory chips ranging in frequency from 1600MHz to 2666MHz.

"The PC gaming market is robust and growing and we are pleased to contribute to that market with our new, more aggressive HyperX Predator memory kits," said Mark Tekunoff, senior technology manager, Kingston. "Enthusiasts will experience higher performance, ultra-responsive multitasking possibilities and an overall faster system thanks to its top optimized performance settings for specific modules ― handpicked and tested by our Kingston engineers."

HyperX Predator kits of 2 and 4 come in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities. No word yet on when you'll able to purchase them or for how much.

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GBI Research Explains How the DRAM Industry Damned Itself

Paul Lilly — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:00:16 +0000

Remember when high-end memory kits would set you back several hundred dollars? Those days are long gone, and for various reasons (all of which are great for consumers but stink for manufactures trying to flip a profit), they might never return. One of the reasons is that overclocking no longer carries such a heavy reliance on RAM. Memory is still important, but not like it was in the Pentium IV and AMD 64 era. But the biggest reason manufacturers are stuck in a low price rut is because they're caught in a "vicious circle of oversupply," GBI Research says.

According to GBI Research, there are several factors at play. There's the global economic uncertainty of the past few years, along with more efficient applications that require less memory, both of which have led to an overabundance of DRAM and resulting price drops.

"Prices have fallen so much in fact that manufacturers have been forced to sell these memory devices at below production cost, preventing profit generation," GBI Research says. "In response, manufacturers have been producing DRAM at 100 percent factory capacity in an attempt to claw back expenses, which has only exacerbated the market oversupply problem."

The growing market for portable devices will offer DRAM makers some relief, but it won't be a saving grace. If they're to dig themselves out of the hole they're currently in, DRAM players will have to control supply and demand, GBI Research says.

Image Credit: Tobias b köhler via Creative Commons

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