WTF is DDR-II doing as system RAM?

[Guden Oden]

see: the moodiest crankiest constantly nagging bitch around here

Heh! I try to limit my frothing at the mouth bitching to programs and nameless/soulless microsoft/blizzard programmers only , not other forum members.

 

[Tahir2]

And the Pope...

 

[aaronspink]

Well people who don't know anything shouldn't just come onto a board and state things that just aren't true and start bitching about said untruths especially without doing some research.

You mean like most people (esp. in the Politics forum)..

And to most people "some research" is 30 minutes with google.

and 30 minutes with google would have prevented the original poster from making a fool of himself. The reason I was an asshole is that he didn't do the minimum amount of research needed to correct himself.

 

[Guden Oden]

You didn't actually contribute anything yourself though, you just said "you're an idiot" multiple times, without bothering to correct any of the (supposedly incorrect) statements he made. That's what most people would call a bad attitude, though I suppose your standards are different.

You know, saying 'you're wrong!' is only half of an argument. As reference, I point you towards a particular famous Monty Python skit...

 

[London Geezer]

see: the moodiest crankiest constantly nagging bitch around here

Heh! I try to limit my frothing at the mouth bitching to programs and nameless/soulless microsoft/blizzard programmers only , not other forum members.

Just to reinforce my point, cranky bitch from hell:

I don't want fucking itunes, if I wanted fucking itunes, I'd go to apple and fucking download it. I refuse to get it just because apple's being a BITCH and bundles it up with friggin quicktime - and the two being completely unrelated I might add! So, no more GOD DAMN QUICKTIME BS for me!

And no, please don't reply with "quicktime alternative", I can't be bothered with hacked shit that don't always work anyway. Who knows what they've done with that stuff anyway, could be anything hidden away in it.

So what if I miss a nintendo nostalgia video, I'll live. No, bring on microsoft and their monopoly I say and destroy this apple crap!

 

[Blazkowicz]

Well people who don't know anything shouldn't just come onto a board and state things that just aren't true and start bitching about said untruths especially without doing some research.

You mean like most people (esp. in the Politics forum)..

And to most people "some research" is 30 minutes with google.

and 30 minutes with google would have prevented the original poster from making a fool of himself. The reason I was an asshole is that he didn't do the minimum amount of research needed to correct himself.

your post was so insulting it was both infuriating and funny

seriously, we were always told it was DDR-2 on the FX5800 Ultra, then DDR-3 on nowadays's GPU, that's why almost no one fucking knows the difference with "real DDR2", I'm in the 0.1% of ppl knowing there's a difference, you appear to be in the 0.0001% knowing WTF it's all about, so please enlighten us instead of spouting your crap!


Are GDDR2 and GDDR3 just forms of DDR1?
Does "real" DDR2 runs at 'half the frequency internally", or is that for future DDR3?
GDDR2 has higher latency than GDDR, right? what about "real DDR2" Vs "real DDR"?

 

[Blazkowicz]

for now DDR2 on mainboards is completely useless.. It's much less crappy than RDRAM, since it may be used in the future, but why spend double the price for nothing.

 

[Guden Oden]

Just to reinforce my point, cranky bitch from hell:

Actually, I was going to rant earlier today about how acrobat 6 auto-update won't let me install acrobat 7 without also installing yahoo's goddamn toolbar, but now I think I'll deny you the pleasure just to spite you!

Seriously tho, this mandatory bundling of unrelated crap together with popular software is really getting out of hand. If I want the damn toolbar, I'll get it myself, simple as that. Pumping up user numbers by forcing installs together with other programs turns itunes and toolbars alike into scumware plain and simple.

 

[hoom]

**resolves not to install acrobat 7 anytime soon**

 

[aaronspink]

Are GDDR2 and GDDR3 just forms of DDR1?

pretty much. There have changes in the physical signalling layer between them (DDR1 SE bidirectional strobe, GDDR2 differential bidirectional strobe, GDDR3 SE unidirectional strobe, also push-pull to psuedo open drain). But much of the actual protocol has remained the same.

One of the main differences between GDDRx and DDRx is that GDDRx is optimized for point to point signalling on the data bus. Plus the actual parts are generally designed around a x32 architecture for GDDRx vs a x8/x4 architecture for DDRx.

There have also been some minor protocol tweaks along the way (I know GDDR3 has the delayed write functionality of DDR2 but don't know if GDDR2 also picked that up.) Both GDDR2 and GDDR3 have internal prefetch lengths of 4 which GDDR1 and DDR1 have internal prefetch lengths of 2.

Does "real" DDR2 runs at 'half the frequency internally", or is that for future DDR3?

DDR was a BL2/PL2 (Burst Length 2/Prefetch Length 2) architecture. DDR2 is a BL4/PL4 architecture and DDR3 will be a BL4 and BL8/PL8 architecture.

By increasing the internal prefetch length between the versions, the memory makes have been able to meet the external data timing with slower internal arrays.

The data array in 100 Mhz DDR (200 Mb/s data rate), runs at 100 Mhz.
The data array in 200 Mhz DDR2 (400 Mb/s data rate), runs at 100 Mhz. but is 2x as wide as the DDR array.
The data array in 400 Mhz DDR3 (800 Mb/s data rate), runs at 100 Mhz. but is 4x as wide as the DDR array.

GDDR2 has higher latency than GDDR, right? what about "real DDR2" Vs "real DDR"?

Higher latency is really an artifact. Given the same core, both DDR and DDR2 would have roughly the same latency (ignoring for the moment the fact that DDR2 doesn't support .5 timings).

The reason that DDR appears to have better latency is because when you are comparing DDR 400 vs DDR2 400, you are comparing the top bin vs the bottom bin.

In addition, at the 400 data rate grades, the DDR2 parts would have able to run at CAS 2.5 (and thus have the same latency as the DDR parts), but DDR2 is spec'd to only support whole step increments in timing.

At 533, you'll actually generally see DDR2 with lower device latencies than DDR1.


Right now the main cost differential between DDR2 and DDR1 is market related (DDR2 is in high demand with tight supplies while DDR1 is in a glut).

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.