Every enthusiast board I have read EMPHATICALLY says that until you have DDR2 667 grade, its not worth looking at, much less playing with. Now I know perfectly well we'll all be testing these modules to see if that's true, but remember Intel is going to a 1066 bus in a few months. That means that 533 will become the MINIMUM spec of memory at that time. That hardly heralds DDR2 as some great and advanced new memory type. I would think that there should be three speed grades at release 400, 533, and 667, to cover 3 classes of users. It is supposedly cheaper to produce the memory, more efficient in power useage, and we already have worse latencies to overcome. Not introducing at least 667 at the start is kind of consigning the first wave of this memory (which usually goes to enthusiasts first) to the trash heap. Its a very bad move, imo, strategically.

Twinmos is the only mfr so far to have committed to producing 667 grade. We'll see if others see the light.

>Servers and workstations powered by Intel’s E7320, E7520 and E7525 >utilizing DDR2 memory are likely to emerge only in the late summer 2003. >The reason why Corsair sells its registered DDR2 memory modules out now –>being the first company to ship this kind of products into the market – is not >fully clear.

Err, Summer 2003? Its 2004 right now. So that means DDRII is already widespread.

I'll repeat, memroy mfg's and Intel are gearing up to lose an entire generation of enthusiasts to AMD this year because of 2 things:

A lack of reasonably priced DDR2 @ 667
A lack of a reasonably priced comparison chip from Intel to match the FX and include 64bit ability

The first is set to come from Twinmos, but it better not be late.
The second might be in the form of the 720 chip but its coming far too late in the year, leaving months for AMD to sell 939 FX's quite probably with pci-e as well.

Memory makers and Intel had better step up to the plate imo, because failing to interest the enthusiasts this year will lose them a whole generation of upgraders.

Perhaps its just too late, but 775 may launch, DDR2 may arrive, and if sales are pathetic, it won't be rocket science as to why...