by Ilya Gavrichenkov
03/05/2002 | 10:07 AM
Yeah, we definitely didn’t expect such tempo from the memory makers increasing prices for SDRAM chips. Of course, we have no doubts that finally SDRAM will become more pricy than DDR SDRAM. The amazing fact is that no one expected it would happen so soon. The thing is that a smooth migration of the productive capacities from SDRAM to DDR SDRAM was supposed to provoke a gradual reduction of prices. Besides, DDR SDRAM prices was expected to scale down step-by-step.
In practice things stand in a different way. The reason is that the manufacturers speculate on uncertainty and excessive demand on the memory market. In late January prices for DDR SDRAM were on the wane, but the trend didn’t last long. In mid-February the price status-quo was restored. As for PC133 SDRAM, it wasn’t going to get cheaper at all: slowly but steadily, its price crept up to that of DDR SDRAM and… today we can see that PC133 SDRAM is more expensive than DDR SDRAM!<%BANNER[article]%>
These are current prices for memory chips according to DRAMeXchange:
| Chip | Max Price | Avg Price | Min Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| PC2100 DDR SDRAM, 256Mbit, 32Mx8 | $9.00 | $8.32 | $7.90 |
| PC133 SDRAM, 256Mbit, 32Mx8 | $9.50 | $8.40 | $8.05 |
| PC2100 DDR SDRAM, 128Mbit, 16Mx8 | $4.50 | $4.17 | $3.95 |
| PC133 SDRAM, 128Mbit, 16Mx8 | $4.60 | $4.34 | $4.00 |
On the whole, the memory market is just a mess. So, we wouldn’t recommend buying any memory-related stuff until the price fuss gets settled.