Whats Happened to RAM prices?

[qazwsx]

A couple of weeks ago I was looking to get a couple of extra gigs of RAM. I was looking at the corsair XMS-6400 (4-4-4-12) and it was £112 but now its dropped down to £92 and the corsair dominator (was £174) now's droped to £116
Is it just a corsair price drop or and whole RAM thing?

also am i right in thinking that if I buy ddr2 800mhz i can still use it? (mobo supports 667)

[onebxr]

DDR3 is what is about to happen!
-1

[qazwsx]

oh yeah i forgot (duh). But its a huge drop and DDR3 wont be used by loads of people right away. Anyway might pay to wait a little longer for more ram see if the price drops anymore

[gvblake22]

Not only DDR3, but DRAM manufacturers have been producing chips like crazy to keep up with the increasing demand for DDR2 and I think supply has finally risen above demand so prices are dropping. DDR3 is just around the corner, but still a ways off in terms of performance and maturity. I wouldn't even think about bothering with DDR3 in 2007 (if it is infact available that soon). In my opinion, maybe another year will be enough time to get DDR3 a leg up on DDR2 in terms of market acceptance, performance, and overall maturity.

[wtcnbrwndo4u]

DDR3 better not freakin' come. I'd be hella pissed if it came out like two months after I build my PC this summer.

[OCNoob]

It's more Supply and Demand than DDR3, I'm pretty sure. Numerous websites state that there was declining demand of DDR2 a few months ago, causing the rapid drop in DRAM prices. I've been watching the prices fall for quite a while now.

The anticipation of DDR3 is not a factor, IMO. The launch of DDR2 was totally lackluster as the platforms out there (925X anyone?) didn't utilize DDR2 to its full potential... and the performance of DDR2 modules back then were lackluster too. Just not too tempting..

[Panda Man]

I happened to RAM prices!!! :P

To add to the above, the cost to make the DIMMs are getting significantly low as well, as was stated in another thread.

[gvblake22]

It all really comes down to the basic cycle of maturity. I remember when DDR2 first started to hit the scene and everyone was totally against it because there wasn't good support for the higher speed kits and they all had relatively high latencies compared to DDR and didn't offer any performance improvement. Now that DDR2-800 is cheap and has tightened up the latencies, it performs better than DDR in nearly virtually every aspect and I don't know of anyone who would rather build a system with DDR than DDR2.

I expect the exact same situation with DDR3. The first generation of kits will hit the scene at moderately fast speeds with high latency and no one will want to give up their prize DDR2-800 memory with Micron D9's (like everyone on thier Samsung TCCD DDR kits). Then, once DDR3 chips start getting faster and chipsets/memory controllers become more advanced and tuned to DDR3, it will slowly take over until DDR2 is a thing of the past. But again, that is all still a ways off, so I wouldn't get worried about buying a DDR2 system in 2007 (or even early to mid 2008), it won't be out of date that quickly

[qazwsx]

so if its a supply and demand price drop, surely after the stock runs lower again, prices will bumb back up right? or is it going to stay down or even drop again? Im just wondering if I should rush and get some or wait a bit longer

[screwballl]

The prices always go up for several months before and after Christmas then come back down.
Now you can get a 1GB DDR2 SODIMM for $35 from newegg and a 2GB DDR2-800 pair can be had for a touch over $100 when not too long ago the cheapest was $189...

or even higher end setups for $108 after MIR
Newegg.com - OCZ SLI-Ready 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail