Only consumer of DDR2 until 2004 ?

[gunblade]

"Nvidia first — and perhaps only — user of DDR II until 2004"

"Nvidia Corp. will become the first mainstream user of DDR II memory when it announces its NV30 PC graphics processor at Comdex Monday (Nov. 18). However, Intel Corp. is not expected to support the memory type for broader use in PC main memory until 2004.
Although the ATI part has been demonstrated running with DDR-II memory, sources said the DRAM was running in a DDR-I compatibility mode. The part was not designed for use with DDR-II, according to sources." --EE times

Is this true ?
it seems both marketing departments are doing their jobs .. 8)

 

[DemoCoder]

Well, I don't know if it is true or not, but EE Times isn't exactly the inquirer.

 

[Megadrive1988]

makes no sense at all. What wouldn't or why couldn't ATI use DDR-II memory with a Radeon 9700 card, or the R350?

I thought Radeon9700/R300 was designed to work with both DDR and DDR-II....

 

[gunblade]

I thought Radeon9700/R300 was designed to work with both DDR and DDR-II....

I think you gain some you lose some. 256 bit data width does eat up silicon to implement, and well, so does DDR-2 support. Then, under cost prohibitive situation, you have to chose one of them...

 

[cellarboy]

"Nvidia first — and perhaps only — user of DDR II until 2004"

"Although the ATI part has been demonstrated running with DDR-II memory, sources said the DRAM was running in a DDR-I compatibility mode. The part was not designed for use with DDR-II, according to sources." --EE times

Gotta love those 'sources'. Always popping up at the most opportune of times....

I'm personally more inclined to believe ATI than some anonymous source, but who the heck knows?

 

[Entropy]

I thought Radeon9700/R300 was designed to work with both DDR and DDR-II....

I think you gain some you lose some. 256 bit data width does eat up silicon to implement, and well, so does DDR-2 support. Then, under cost prohibitive situation, you have to chose one of them...

DDRII support requires precious little.
That just isn't the issue here.
IF there is substance to this, look elsewhere for explanations.

Entropy

 

[KimB]

The way I see it, the problem was most likely related to clock speed. It just seems obvious to me that a current R300 board with little/no changes except for the DDR2 memory (anybody know if DDR2 is pin-compatible with DDR?) wouldn't be able to run at much higher clock speeds, if any higher.

That is, there would be signal issues with the massive bus, meaning the board would likely have to be redesigned for the higher memory frequencies.

As a quick example, notice how, of late, many video boards are shipping with memory rated at a fair bit higher than it's clocked? Have you also noticed that these boards don't always overclock to the rated speed of the memory. The obvious conclusion is that noise between the chip and the RAM is a significant limiting factor here, noise which will get even more problematic for a 256-bit bus.

After having said all this, it does seem like a decent possibility that the first DDR2 board we see from ATI will actually be a 128-bit DDR2 board.

 

[martrox]

And you wouldn't think ATI COULD redesign the board to use DDrII?

 

[Evildeus]

And you wouldn't think ATI COULD redesign the board to use DDrII?

Perhaps you need time and be cost effective

Well, we will see next year

 

[martrox]

Next year as in when the NV30 is available in quanity?

 

[Evildeus]

Next year as in when the NV30 is available in quanity?

You are assuming next year is 2004? I think you sgould read the first post

PS: Where did i say NV30 was going to be mass produce in 2002?

 

[martrox]

= sarcasm.......

 

[Nagorak]

Oh no, it's the army of 's: RUN!

 

[Evildeus]

Oh no, it's the army of 's: RUN!

Kristof power

 

[Humus]

LOL

 

[Ichneumon]

Perhaps they can get away with saying that because ATI will be using "GDDR3" instead of "DDR2"... in marketing you can be the first in the world for anything as long as u use some trademarked or other name for something that is basically the same as someone else is using...

 

[noko]

Maybe GDD3 addresses 256bit bus problems or interference problems. Plus isn't GDD3 surppose to be available in 2003? Meaning ATI may never use DDR2 ram in a large capacity.

 

[Teasy]

As a quick example, notice how, of late, many video boards are shipping with memory rated at a fair bit higher than it's clocked? Have you also noticed that these boards don't always overclock to the rated speed of the memory. The obvious conclusion is that noise between the chip and the RAM is a significant limiting factor here, noise which will get even more problematic for a 256-bit bus.

Are you talking about the Radeon 8500/9000 cards? I had one of these boards (8500LE).

My card had 3.6ns ram and the ram ran at 250mhz, it wouldn't even clock to the rated 275mhz. But noise was nothing to do with it, the ram was actually undervolted. As soon as I gave the ram the boltage that the ram manufacturer recommened, the same as the full Radeon 8500 cards ram gets (they also use 3.6ns ram) the card clocked well past 275mhz (295mhz and even higher). I think this is the case with most of the cards, mostly Radeon 8500/9000 cards. For some reason they use good ram, but undervolt it to limit the speed... it doesn't make sense to me, but the very fact that giving the ram normal voltage allows normal overclocking shows that noise has nothing to do with it.

 

[noko]

So in this case ATI limitied the ram speed intentionally (obviously) so as to be able to market a higher performing card. Now I wonder why ATI just didn't use slower and usually cheaper ram as in 4ns vice the 3.6ns version?

 

[Sage]

perhaps it was cheaper to order massive quantities of 3.6ns rather that some 3.6 and some 4