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The consumer market has yet to embrace DDR3 memory and it seems that in light of the current negative economic outlook, this will remain so as DDR3 is still relegated to the enthusiast section of the computing community, with no other avenue to spread its reach.

To many, DDR2 remains stable enough for use and combined with the large manufacturing capacity, costs are significantly lower. This will continue to hamper adoption of DDR3 RAM, even though it has some very exciting improvements to the previous generation of memory.

DDR3 SDRAM Component Features:

•    Support of system level flight time compensation
•    On-DIMM mirror friendly DRAM pin out
•    Introduction of CAS Write Latency per speed bin
•    Asynchronous reset function is now available
•    On-die I/O calibration engine
•    Automatic data bus line read and write calibration

DDR3 Module Improvements:

•    Higher bandwidth performance increase, up to 1600 MHz per spec
•    Fly-by command/address/control bus with on-DIMM termination
•    High precision calibration resistors construction
•    Performance increase at low power
•    Enhanced low power features conserve energy
•    Improved thermal design now operates cooler

The most important improvement is efficiency, as the packaging and IC design has allowed more than 32% savings in electricity, and important improvement for large corporations operating datafarms where they can see significant savings in their electricity bill. Another benefit that may be of interest is optimizations that allows the speeds of DDR3 to more than double existing DDR2 speeds.

However, at the end of the day, the problem still lie with cost; and with $US300 motherboards supporting DD3, it’s little wonder that people are reluctant to take the leap.

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