Ever since Halloween, the Internet has been buzzing with disillusions of grandeur concerning memory. Double Data Rate SDRAM has been promising lower power consumption, high bandwidth, and similar latency compared to Normal PC100 and PC133 SDRAM of today’s market. It was of course on October 30th that the majority of Tech sites released the info on AMD’s 760 Chipset, the first chipset to support DDR-SDRAM for the Socket A based System. It is now almost two months later, and retailers here in the states have seen head, tails, nor transistors of this infamous memory design. Even more elusive are it’s supporting chipsets, now numbering into the four’s, the Ali MAGiK I, VIA’s Apollo266 for Intel, VIA’s AMD DDR Chipset, and AMD’s own 760.
To this editor, this is starting to be a little more than just troublesome. I am starting to remember the horrible setbacks that left the AMD K5 CPU as a competitor against the Cyrix chips as opposed to being a Chipzilla threat. Of course, the devil on my other shoulder keeps whispering some very logical facts into my ear. The ALi MAGiK I was been shown to actually be beaten to death by VIA’s KT133 Chipset (SDR-SDRAM) in terms of memory performance.
This of course isn’t related to problems with DDR memory at all, but with the North Bridge of the Chipset itself. The North Bridge, or Memory and Graphics Controller Hub as the Green and Blue like to call it, is the only road between the CPU and the SDRAM. A badly lain-out and engineered North Bridge is similar to a poorly maintained roadway; traffic will be slow and cautious. The only reason the KT133 beats the MAGiK I is the fact that the KT133 has been around the since longer, and has more time to be perfected.
Truthfully, neither of the devil’s on my shoulder have won this battle. One side of me wants a working DDR platform on the market at a reasonable price (in comparison to Rambus). The other side knows that perfection takes time, and would rather wait a few more months for a DDR platform that will certainly drive the sliver steak through the heart of Rambus. (Rambus lawyer can contact me at mdockter@pcmech.com and ask for my legal address in order to file a libel suit)
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I have a motherboard that supports both pc 133 sdram as well as ddr but I am unsure which ddr I should purchase as I can purchase 2G of ddr for the same amount as 1G of sdram. I would like to boost my system but nobody wants to talk to me just sell me a new computor. Can you help me please.
Blair
Hi i could use your help every time i try to put my memory cards back into my computer i get a out of frequency error message. buy the way i have the same board you do that supports both pc 133 sdram as well as ddr what am i doing wrong?