DDR4 spotted at Computex from G.Skill and Adata

[Scorpus]

No consumer products support DDR4 memory just yet, but that hasn’t stopped several of Computex 2014’s exhibitors from showing off DDR4 modules of their own.

At G.Skill’s booth, the company showed off five engineering DDR4 samples behind glass: three 4 GB modules and two 8 GB modules with varying speeds. The entry level DDR4 units were clocked at 2133 MHz – well above a typical non-overclocked DDR3 module – and there were also 2400 MHz and 2666 MHz modules on display.

Over at Adata’s booth they had on display their XPG DDR4 modules actively running on a prototype motherboard, which unfortunately the company refused to detail for us (although it’s likely an Intel X99 board). A sticker on the display indicated these are the world’s first overclocking-compatible DDR4 modules, although there’s no word on when they’ll be available.

DDR4 will first come to server platforms shortly, before it becomes supported on Intel’s X99 enthusiast platform for Haswell-E processors towards the end of 2014. As for mainstream support, you’ll have to wait until 2015 before you can chuck DDR4 modules in your typical desktop PC.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/56993-ddr4-spotted-at-computex-from-gskill-and-adata.html

 

[Seventh Reign]

Looks like I'll be upgrading my SandyBridge system sometime in 2015.

 

[Guest]

This is very interesting how people can be fooled into thinking that they are upgrading when in fact the computer market has been going sideways since 2000. DDR has 2,2,2,2 timings DDR2 has 4,4,4,4 and DDR3 has 8,8,8,8 approximation so what ever you gain in mhz you loose in wait state. So you are at the same place with all memory. So what is the point in updating. I don't see a point. Only benefit of ddr3 is laptops where low power maters for battery life. Not on desktops where you may save 5 dollars per year. I see potential though in the fanless CPUs in the 14 nm shrink. So that will be a plus. Also the new security ad ons for intel cpus. But I don't see myself upgrading for another 8 years. Will see if I get fanless cpus and ddr6. hahaha Also I refuse to buy any cell phone that is not water and freeze prof. I don't get it. We sweat and the world is 70 percent water covered and there is rain. So the point is there should be no phone or mp3 player head phone or watch that is not water proof. The industry needs to pull their head out of a ss .

 

[Guest]

As far as upgrading goes the computer enthusiast market can definitely be out of control. If you bought the latest and greatest card from nvidia there really is no reason to upgrade to the very next iteration of the top tier graphics card, at least not right away. However iterations of technology really do improve things. As for RAM the differences between ddr 1, 2, 3, and 4 are actually quite large. You are correct in saying that the timings get bigger, but saying that you don't make that up in MHz is not a correct statement. While logical in nature it doesn't hold up to the actual technology. Many years ago we could go by such things, but technology has vastly improved since then. A few years ago running your processor and your RAM in 1:1 ratio was all the rage. Since then there have been drastic improvements that make clocking the processor and RAM in a 1:1 ratio negligible. My main point is arguing just the timings and clock speed of the RAM would be debatable in saying there is no improvement, but when you consider things like dual or triple channel, the way processors work now, the way the actual chips for the RAM are made, and much more it quickly becomes far more complicated than just comparing clock speeds and timings.

 

[theBest11778]

This is very interesting how people can be fooled into thinking that they are upgrading when in fact the computer market has been going sideways since 2000. DDR has 2,2,2,2 timings DDR2 has 4,4,4,4 and DDR3 has 8,8,8,8 approximation so what ever you gain in mhz you loose in wait state. So you are at the same place with all memory. So what is the point in updating. I don't see a point. Only benefit of ddr3 is laptops where low power maters for battery life. Not on desktops where you may save 5 dollars per year. I see potential though in the fanless CPUs in the 14 nm shrink. So that will be a plus. Also the new security ad ons for intel cpus. But I don't see myself upgrading for another 8 years. Will see if I get fanless cpus and ddr6. hahaha Also I refuse to buy any cell phone that is not water and freeze prof. I don't get it. We sweat and the world is 70 percent water covered and there is rain. So the point is there should be no phone or mp3 player head phone or watch that is not water proof. The industry needs to pull their head out of a ss .

You're kind of right. Higher latency timings effect overall performance drastically. I read an article somewhere recently comparing DDR2 800Mhz 4-4-4 to DDR3 1600/1866/2133/2666 (with their average timings for each. Real world performance was pretty flat across the board (suppose DDR1 400Mhz at 2-2-2 would probably be flat as well.) However, that's dealing with your average cheap RAM. Not sure what happened with DDR3, but when I bought my X58 board DDR3 1600 7-7-7 was pretty common. This gave me a pretty nice boost over DDR2. However something happened once Sandy Bridge (or maybe Lynnfield,) and timings jumped to 9-9-9 standard for 1600.

My point is you can get faster memory, but make sure to buy good RAM (That means expensive,) as it seems the first generation of memory, and most tech, is usually better than when they start hitting mainstream prices because they need to prove to the market that the technology is worth the upgrade. Later on it's just accepted. That's one benefit of being an Enthusiast... you always get better quality to go along with those initial problems

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Well if that's supposed to OC'ed RAM (they look ghastly BTW) in the pic, then they sure made an excellent choice of cooler for the proc.

 

[Guest]

On that memory timing thing, a good comparison is something like DDR2 800Mhz 4-4-4 against DDR3 1600Mhz 8-8-8. On this; the 8 is the same duration as the 4. However, the effective 1600Mhz will give you twice as much data transfer. I thought that is what all this DDR increment was all about.

 

[Guest]

What they really need to do is increase the CPU core count to say 16, and then the data-bus width significantly by using stacked RAM. That will get people excited. At least they have been doing something like that with GPU over the last few years.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps they are holding back the tech, because they want to take the tablet market, and they don't want the Desktop PC market to be too far ahead.

 

[tmcclelland47]

What they really need to do is increase the CPU core count to say 16, and then the data-bus width significantly by using stacked RAM. That will get people excited. At least they have been doing something like that with GPU over the last few years.

I might consider upgrading from a Hyper-Threaded socket 478 Pentium 4 with a gig of RAM if that happened.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Anyone content with socket 478, will likely never need more power than what is already available.

 

[Guest]

This is very interesting how people can be fooled into thinking that they are upgrading when in fact the computer market has been going sideways since 2000. DDR has 2,2,2,2 timings DDR2 has 4,4,4,4 and DDR3 has 8,8,8,8 approximation so what ever you gain in mhz you loose in wait state.

You couldn't be more wrong, fellow guest. The standard DDR2 RAM (DDR2-800 with CAS latency of 5, not 4) could complete a memory access operation in 12.5 nanoseconds, while the standard DDR3 RAM (DDR3-1600 with CAS latency of 9, not 8) can do so in 11.25 nanosenconds, yielding a slight decrease in latency. DDR2-800 with CAS latency of 4 and DDR3-1600 with CAS latency of 8 indeed have the exact same latency, but those are not the standard for each of those RAM types, those were/are sold as slightly faster alternatives.
Second and most importantly, latency is just one of the factors that affect RAM performance. There is also bandwidth, which is completely unrelated to latency, and has increased exponentially between DDR, DDR2 and DDR3. That's where the big gains in performance come from. DDR-400 had a bandwidth of 3.2 GB/s, doubling to 6.4 GB/s for DDR2-800 and again to 12.8 GB/s on DDR3-1600.
Even though the latency may not have changed that much, there is a vast difference in bandwidth between each DDR generation.

 

[Guest]

This article does not give any insights on ddr4 timings or anything architectural. Lost a minute of reading useless text. All commenters talk about old technology..? I was expecting to learn something before googling..