I think a lot of people are scratching their heads about what Intel's
motivations are, at times, for making major changes in the requirements to
run their processors.  I suspect that there was concern that DDR memory
would not be able to continue to handle future increases in bus speeds past
200 MHz, though I'm not sure that is really proving to be the case.  I
believe that DDR2 was seen as a way to continue to increase memory bandwidth
down the road, after DDR had reached its limit.  However, perhaps as they
did with RAMBUS, you can't help but feel that Intel has jumped the gun a
bit, if that was their motivation.  On the other hand, perhaps their
marketing people just liked the advantage of being able to point to DDR2 and
suggest that this makes their product better than the other guys, since it
is only using plain DDR, I don't know.

In any case, I can't help but feel that Intel reached its Pentium 4 zenith
with the Northwood core and the 875 chipset.

But back to your question, the only advantage that I can see to the 925XE
chipset over the 915G is that it supports ECC memory and a 1066 bus, should
Intel offer a Pentium 4, other than the extreme edition, that can make use
of this.  However, this seems rather unlikely, since Intel seems to be
pushing hard to bring their dual core processors into the mainstream,
instead, which (you guessed it) will require a different chipset and
motherboard.

Speaking of dual core processors, perhaps they will be able to make better
use of DDR2, though I'm really not sure about that.  AMD has hinted at
eventually moving to DDR2 memory themselves, in the future, perhaps because
they think the current difference in price between DDR and DDR2 memory will
have disappeared by then.

Trying not too sound too much like a Intel-basher, but I've been a bit
disappointed by what they've had to offer as of late.

John Sproule

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Shkabara" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 5:49 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] DDR vs. DDR2 RAM


>I am comparing the Intel 915G and the 925XE chipsets. Also am comparing the
> DDR vs. the DDR2 RAM. The DDR2 and 925XE are both supposed to be better.
> However, the performance reports that I have seen show that they are about
> the same, or the older type even a bit better. Am I missing something?
> Please help me make a proper analysis.

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