also @ TechSpot: Windows 7 overtakes Vista among enthusiasts, plus other interesting trends

Subscribe

Newsletter Our Feeds

Receive weekly updates on new articles, news and contests in your mail!

Email address:

Hardware

iSuppli: DDR3 to account for over half of DRAM shipments by Q2 2010

By Matthew DeCarlo, TechSpot.com
Published: November 20, 2009, 5:07 PM EST
The shift from DDR2 to DDR3 has been long underway, and research group iSuppli believes the transition will reach a critical point in the second quarter of next year. The outfit predicts DDR3 shipments will rise to account for over half of the global DRAM market by spring 2010, leaving DDR2 behind for the first time.

According to iSuppli, DDR3's share of the DRAM market (in terms of gigabit-equivalent shipments) will grow to 50.9% in the second quarter of 2010, up from a meager 14.2% in 2009 and 1% in 2008. By the end of next year, DDR3 is expected to account for 72% of shipments. The firm provided various contributing reasons for the acceleration away from DDR2.

For starters, Intel's latest CPU architecture, Nehalem, features an on-chip memory controller that only supports DDR3 RAM. As PC manufacturers gravitate toward Intel's new processor line, they must also employ DDR3 memory. It's also worth noting that DDR3 prices have fallen drastically, recently dipping below DDR2 -- not to mention that DDR3 is faster and more energy efficient.

Related Stories

User Comments (4)

Post a comment
red1776
on November 20, 2009
5:12 PM
would be a good idea to get it now, this is the reason for the upcoming shortages/price hikes coming.

Reply | Quote

Puiu
on November 21, 2009
2:03 AM
With so many PC's now supporting DDR3 it was about time we saw an increase in sales. My next computer will have DDR3.

Reply | Quote

Vicenarian
on November 24, 2009
3:14 PM
Interesting though...I remember reading an article a while back where they did some benchmarks between different speeds of DDR2 memory, using games, real life applications, etc. and found that there wasn't a huge amount of performance gain between the slowest DDR2 and the fastest "gamer grade" DDR2. I could be wrong, I'm just quoting what I remember from the article. But yeah, I mean, sure DDR3 is faster, but is it really going to make that much of a difference when it comes to real life applications?

Disclaimer: I don't actually own a computer with DDR3 yet...

Reply | Quote

Nirkon
on November 25, 2009
2:06 AM
RAM is still pretty expensive where I live... and now DDR2 is even more expensive than 3!
why is that a problem? because a DDR3 M/B costs twice as much as a DDR2...
so you end up losing money anyway

Reply | Quote

Browse more commented news

Post a new comment