RAM Prices - Why So Volatile ?

movieman

as I have seen some retailers doing 'budget' , 'value' , 'generic' offerings, surely it works or it doesn't ?

Generally, but it might not be as reliable as the high-cost memory.

As I understand it, what usually happens with the 'budget' lines is that they buy the defective chips from the big RAM manufacturers and then have software which determines which parts don't work properly. Then they figure out how to combine chips to get a DIMM which does work.

For example, if they have eight 32MB RAM chips where half of the memory doesn't work, they can stick them on a DIMM with half the memory disabled and sell it as a 128MB DIMM instead of 256MB. Since they got the defective RAM cheap, they can still sell for less than a fully-working 128MB DIMM, and in theory the 128MB that's still accessible to the CPU should be 100% reliable because they tested it.

I did manage to get 512mb from PCWorld today for £30 the make is PNY, they did have cheaper 'Component Shop' RAM, like tesco's value brand I assume, I am trying to get good value, do you think I got it ?

Probably .

i remember a few years back when 128mb was like £100 then it came down to like £40 because of oversupply, flooding the market etc

I remember when an 8MB upgrade for my laptop was $250 and I had to go to Taipei to buy it .

tr3mor

You'll always find that RAM starts to get more expensive around September time it tails off and will be at its cheapest again in Jan/Feb.

I think its something to do with the typhoon season in Taiwan. I could be wrong!

superscaper wrote:

Good old Moore's Law :beer:

Moore's Law is regarding processors not memory!

withabix

16K (yes, Kilobytes) Ram pack for a ZX81 used to be about £100...

A VIC-20 tape recorder was £75

A 40MB (yes MB) hard drive for my Mac Plus cost £300... (mind you, the Mac Plus was about £2800!)

Showing me age!

postingalwaysposting

slowen wrote:

Purchased some RAM from crucial and opted for free delivery and it arrived within 48 hours and at the moment Quidco are offering 10% cashback until the end of September as it is normally 7% and on the Crucial website they have also reduced the prices by 5% so in total you can get 15% discount on RAM

solen i was going to do this through quidco but crucial wanted £51.51 for 512mb for my machine i wents to another shop and got 3% cash back (through quidco) and it was only £29.99 :T i now have a super speedy pc :rotfl:

superscaper

tr3mor wrote:

Moore's Law is regarding processors not memory!

Not true, many implementations of formula are for transistor density on cpus but the actual law is more generic for electronic components density in integrated circuits. RAM speed doesn't follow an exponential law but the capacity still follows Moore's Law. I've seen it used many times being applied to both volatile and non-volatile memory.

movieman

Indeed: Moore's law is about chips in general, not CPUs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moores_law

slowen

postingalwaysposting wrote:

solen i was going to do this through quidco but crucial wanted £51.51 for 512mb for my machine i wents to another shop and got 3% cash back (through quidco) and it was only £29.99 :T i now have a super speedy pc :rotfl:

I only purchased 256mb for my laptop to boost it upto 512mb, think it cost me £20 in total plus about £1.50 in cashback from Quidco

Have not installed it yet