Rambus Memory

[ELDoro]

hey guys, my brother's computer is in need of a serious upgrade, mainly RAm and a new graphics card. Well the problem is his motherboard is compatable with RDRAM.... and all the RDRAM I can find is pretty expensive. I would like to upgrade it to about 1GB of RAM. Over at new egg its about $84 for a 256 stick (and i believe thats the only 256 stick available at newegg that is RDRAM). I was wondering why RDRAM costs so much compared to other memory? and if anyone has any ideas or places to find RDRAM that is cheap?

[Toona]

I got two 256 sticks of samsung RDRAM i'll sell ya cheap

pm me if your interested

[ric449]

Thats the main reason RDRAM never caught on, its just too expensive. Intel moved on to DDR as soon as they could. The prices you have found are probably the cheapest you will find.

[sdkfz]

There was some sort of falling out of corporations and Intel went in another direction "fine I'll take my ball and go home" sort of thing. As a result the demand stopped casue no one made boards for it and now the production runs are so small that you get no economy of scale.

[Toona]

Yeah thats why i got 2 sticks layin around. My old computer had em and the mobo got fried so i switched to ddr when i bought the new motherboard

[forizzle111]

i wud jus buy a new motherboard and get some nice and cheap DDR value

[kram 2.0]

Originally Posted by ELDoro I was wondering why RDRAM costs so much compared to other memory? and if anyone has any ideas or places to find RDRAM that is cheap?

Liscencing. Rambus pioneered the technology and wanted money from it. They cashed in on an three year (?) agreement with Intel where Intel will exclusively use RDRAM for its Pentium 4 processors. No one except Intel could use it - not AMD, not Motorolla, not VIA. Guess what happens when there's a monopoly? Prices skyrocket. Intel bailed out as soon as the agreement was over and released its 845 chipset and DDR SDRAM support.

kram

[glc]

It's gonna be cheaper to buy a new motherboard and a gig of DDR than it is to upgrade your RDRAM. If you post the current motherboard model and processor, we can advise you on the best way to go. If this is a name brand computer, please indicate so along with the exact model, that's going to be a different story.