Kingston and Others

Kingston, meanwhile, extends its “extreme” HyperX module series by introducing surprisingly traditional PC3200 models and improving latencies in the currently available PC3000 and PC3500.

The competitors were better in March, however. TwinMOS made a 512MB PC3700 module, while GeIL rolled out paired 500MHz PC4000 modules for dual-channel configurations. That’s extreme as hell. Kingmax brought some merriment into the house showing modules made of multi-colored chips. They are aesthetes, aren’t they? Although they say it’s just to fight fakes that imitate brand modules like ValueRAM and JetRAM.

But it is another well-known memory overclocker, OCZ Technology, that was the most spectacular of all in March. Not wasting their time on trifles, they announced memory modules with up to 6.4GB/s bandwidth. 800MHz chips? No, the chips are ordinary, 400MHz ones. OCZ is just the first memory modules maker to use the QBM technology from Kentron that allows doubling the effective memory bus bandwidth. A tiny and low-cost controller built into the module makes a 4.2GB/s module from 266MHz chips, a 5.4GB/s module – from 333MHz chips and 6.4GB/s – from 400MHz chips.

These are numbers for standard configurations, in case of dual-channel ones we should multiply them by two. And we are going to get to this arithmetic quite soon. Upcoming VIA KT600 and PT600 will support single- and dual-channel configurations of QBM modules. Bravo, Kentron! To tell you the truth, we were quite skeptical about anybody going to produce such modules.

For more information about QBM technology from Kentron please see our article called “Quad Band Memory Technology from Kentron: Shorter Way to Higher Memory Bandwidth?”.

Conclusion

That’s about all there was in the market in March. There is only one topic left: prices. They stopped in their downward motion, and that’s it. Prices were at the same level throughout the month; this specifically concerns contract prices. Anyway, we guess memory prices won’t go up in the next two or three months.

Moreover, the manufacturers’ assortment policy suggests that we can get ready for further DDR SDRAM price reduction. From this quarter on, all the majors are going to increase PC2700-PC3200 chips share in their production volumes. This will bring the price of these memory types down, and it will definitely affect the price for PC2100 modules and chips. Overall, it’s going to go rather down than up.