DDR Prices - How Low will they go??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al
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Al

I have a lot of PC133 SDRAM and have been waiting to switch to DDR
because the price of the RAM was higher than the whole motherboard!
I've just been trying to baby my KT266 and hope it holds out.

Now the prices of DDR seem to be dropping, but I don't want to get
burned on memory prices like I have in the past. I've paid as low as
$45 for 512 MB of SDRAM.

Any idea if the DDR prices will keep dropping? Have there been any
predictions about future supply/demand and when prices might hit a
low?
 
Al said:
I have a lot of PC133 SDRAM and have been waiting to switch to DDR
because the price of the RAM was higher than the whole motherboard!
I've just been trying to baby my KT266 and hope it holds out.

Now the prices of DDR seem to be dropping, but I don't want to get
burned on memory prices like I have in the past. I've paid as low as
$45 for 512 MB of SDRAM.

Any idea if the DDR prices will keep dropping? Have there been any
predictions about future supply/demand and when prices might hit a
low?
Click to expand...
Interesting question to think about. I can remember the days where a
megabyte of memory for a Digital PDP-10 cost about $80,000 and filled a 6'
relay rack. In 1980 I heard a talk by Leo Rideout from IBM. He state that
microrprocessors were not an important revenue source, but rather, memory
chips is where the rubber hits the road. Now, to first order the cost of a
memory chip is a small constant (manufacturing, packaging, sales, ...) plus
a number related to the area of the chip. The Orient wins all the
battles.

If we in the USA want to preserve our technology resources, we must have
tarriffs to make the price of a memory chip independent of whether it was
made in this country or in the Orient. But politicians may decide that this
is not a desireable goal. If so, we will see low memory prices for as long
as the US is willing to let other countries know what to build and how to
build it. Meanwhile, engineers who would normally be inventing the next
generation of technology will be standing in the unemployment lines.
 
In June they are going to begin using DDR2 in the newest motherboards so DDR
production will begin to go down. That may mean prices will be going back
up due to shortages.
 
The global economy isp icking up so corporates will soon start buying PCs,
routers, switches, etc, bringing a demand to memory. However, I agree on the
thought about jobs going overseas.
 
In June they are going to begin using DDR2 in the newest motherboards so DDR
production will begin to go down. That may mean prices will be going back
up due to shortages.
Click to expand...


Good info. I saw the big leap in SDRAM prices when DDR first came out
too, so it makes sense.
 
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