Topic: RAM Prices...As a techie, i cant believe this....

[JMM]

Having bought a Sony Vaio in the early days of it's release, I'm stuck with PC-800 RDRAM, anybody got some cheap vendors for me? I'd really like to max this thing out as it has been a very good P4 for two years now...  

[Pestalence]

PC2700 ram is less expensive because of marketing techniques to increase it's popularity...

reason being when PC2700 came out, It had an error in it that caused internal memory leaks, so most people went back to PC2100 or PC 2500... now Manufacturers are trying to make PC2700 popular again since the flaw has been fixed.. thus for a short time t(3 to 6 months) he cost will be low, but as more systems come out with PC2700, the price will rise again and PC 2100 will be cheaper..

 

[KBF-HangNail]

built me a comp with Tower,Speakers,19' Monitor,Keyboard Mouse,CD-rw,DVD rom  2200  512 ram which i upgraded too 1 gig and a Nividia G force 440 64 MB all for 600.00 dollars.  

[CFA_Admiral_Tige]

How Mcuh RAM Do you have?
Less then 128 MB
128 MB
129-256 MB
257-512 MB
More then 512 MB

 

[Pestalence]

I have 1 gig on my laptop....

here are my system sxpecs for my laptop

Toshiba Satellite 5205-s705

Pentium P-IV 2.4Ghz Mobile
1 Gig PC 2100 DDR Ram
750MHZ FBS Motherboard
Geforce FX go5600 w/ 64 MB DDR PC 2100 ram
Yahama AC-XG Dolby Digital 6.1 Surround, THX / SRS Certified
Harmon / Kardon Dolby Digital 6.1 speakers (2) with subwoofer (1) built in
15" Diagonal viewable 1600x1200 res monitor with Clear Advanced Super View UXGA Display
OS : Windows XP Pro Media Center Edition
TV Tuner Card
DVD / CD Burner (DVD Ram, Drive DVD -r/rw / cd -r/rw burning)
Media Center Remote Control w/ Cable Box Override interface
60 GB HDD @ 5200 RPM
Integrated 802.11b Wireless lan
I.Link (IEEE 1392) Port and SD slot
Canon BJC-85 mobile Color, Photo Capable Printer
Touchpad Mouse w/ scroll wheel
Several TV out / TV in... RCA Audio IN / OUT .. Conitor Out ports
v.92 56K modem
10/100 Ethernet lan card integrated..
3 HR battery pack

the nice thing about this machine is that the picture is clearer than any monitor or TV on the market today.. you can see this model's predicessor at Comp USA for sale @ $1400... the predicessor to this machine is the Satellite 5205-s119.. the difference is the OS (XP Home), TV Tuner (not installed), Remote Package (Media Center Components so not included with OS), slower CPU (2.0 GHZ)

the rest of the machine is the same.. however, they only come with 512 MB PC 2100 DDR Ram.. I upgraded mine to 1 GIg...

It works flawlessly with all games with exception to Edios games.. they do not support Laptop Keyboards, and as such, their games don't work correctly... but no problems with SFC (I, II: EAW, II: OP, III: TNG), Freespace, RTCW-GOTY, Max Payne 1 & 2, Siberia, NWN with both expansions, Armada 1 @ 2, Klingon Honor Guard, EF 1 and II, The Hulk, Spiderman, Wolverine's Revenge, FA-18, Tron 2.0, Mistmare, Splinter Cell, and many Many Console emmulator ROMs...

this is my primary system since i am on the road a lot.. I paid $2550 (Tax inclusive) for it the day it went on the market (shelf cost was $2850 + Tax but got business discount at Comp USA).

 

[CFA_Admiral_Tige]

Best Buys Ad------------------

256 MegaBytes PC133 SDRAM(The first style of "DIMM" Ram) $60
256 MegaBytes PC2700 DDRRAM(Twice as fast as the SDRAM) $40

Isnt that crazy???

Tiger  

[CFA_Admiral_Tige]

What type of RAM do you have?
SDRAM(PC66/100/133, 66MHz-133MHz)
DDRRAM aka "Double Data Rate"(PC2100-PC3700, 266 MHz-400 MHz)
RDRAM aka "Rimms"(PC533-PC1066, 533MHz-1066MHz)
Dont Know

 

[starwolf3500]

My understanding is that they aren't producing SDRAM in huge quantities anymore (they have shifted to DDR).  This is causing a low supply / high cost situation.

[CptCastrin]

Quote:
Best Buys Ad------------------

256 MegaBytes PC133 SDRAM(The first style of "DIMM" Ram) $60
256 MegaBytes PC2700 DDRRAM(Twice as fast as the SDRAM) $40

Isnt that crazy???

Tiger  

Not really, understand that PC133 is now considered legacy memory. Most current MBs are DDR and with nVidia's nForce2 chipset where both channels of PC3200 (DDR400) memory are accually being used, you will see less and less of the old SDRAM modules.

Funny you should put this up as I was looking at the pricing just recently. We have several legacy MBs taht need more memory (or an upgrade) and the pricing that I got pretty much mirrored yours. Plus I'm trying to find some old K6-2 500mhz cpus for a project. There is a computer sale this weekend (you know the type) that I'll probably go to, to see if there is any thing useful there.

Ah, gota' love being an IT guy.  

   

[Kroma_BaSyl]

Not that unusual, saw the same inverted price with PC100 about 9 months ago. Scarcity of a commodity drives up the price.

[Captain KoraH]

An interesting thing to note here is that this price situation does not seem to be the same for all PC components. Drives, for instance, don't get more expensive as they get old. PC RAM seems to have an "economic dynamic" all it's own where it starts out outrageously expensive, then as newer faster types emerge it gets cheaper for a while, and eventually as it gets "old" it starts getting scarce since companies stop making it, and the price starts going back up. Obviously the reason for this is that PC's seem to age very quickly, more quickly than most consumers and companies would like, so they tend to hang on to their "old" machines, making the RAM still useful. But where RAM is a component that is tied directly to the machines it's made for, things like Drives and video cards are not, and can be easily upgraded, so they don't have the same life cycle as the RAM. It's also this tie to the MOBO that makes most people eventually upgrade to a newer PC; to "get more speed" they have to get a newer computer eventually.

It's all a very interesting and unique part of the IT industry.  

[ActiveX]

I have an AMD K6-2 500Mhz I'm not using...

[ActiveX]

And some 256Mb SDRAM...

[CptCastrin]

Quote:
An interesting thing to note here is that this price situation does not seem to be the same for all PC components. Drives, for instance, don't get more expensive as they get old. ...

The key difference there is that HDDs are for the most part forward compatible. A 10gb HDD will work in any 586 based MB regardless of the configuration (AMD over Intel, etc.) and will probably continue to till SATA truely catches on. (as a side note my next build for my PC will be an all SATA set up ) Till then IDE drives et all will work in what ever system you put them in.

So unlike market forces for memory, which are currently based on innovation which causes obselesence. I.e. DDR replaces RIMM and SDRAM (though RIMM was supposed to replace SDRAM but we all know that didn't really catch) and the next big thing will do the same to DDR. The HDD prices won't see the same effect till the same causes are in place. Give it about 2 years ... maybe less.

       

[Praxis]

Maybe that SDRAM is the laptop version of RAM?  The laptop chips are half the size (actual physical size, not megabytes) and twice the cost.

[APEXNETHOR]

The same can be said about current CPU prices as well. For istance an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1400Mhz 200fsb CPU has an OEM price of $89.99 compared to an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 333fsb with an OEM price of $81.00.

Yep it's a bit wierd but somebody must want those chips bad enough to pay that much for them just like memory dimms.  

[TB613]

Quote:
The same can be said about current CPU prices as well. For istance an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1400Mhz 200fsb CPU has an OEM price of $89.99 compared to an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 333fsb with an OEM price of $81.00.

Yep it's a bit wierd but somebody must want those chips bad enough to pay that much for them just like memory dimms.    

That 1400MHz 200FSB CPU is almost imposible to find. I was considering picking one up to do a cheap upgrade to my 1000MHz machine and gave up when I was seeing eBay bids exceeding $100.00 for a used CPU! Since the motherboaed in that computer cannot take the 266FSB CPUs I gave up and built a brand new monster, P4 2.8GHz 800MHz FSB, Intel 875PBZ motherboard, two sticks of 512MB DDR400 RAM, Seagate 80GB Serial ATA hard drive, Sound Blaster Audigy LS, and a GeForce FX5200 as a temporary graphics card that will be replaced with a Raedon 9600 XT when they ship.    

[What's_in_a_name]

Quote:
That 1400MHz 200FSB CPU is almost imposible to find. I was considering picking one up to do a cheap upgrade to my 1000MHz machine and gave up when I was seeing eBay bids exceeding $100.00 for a used CPU! Since the motherboaed in that computer cannot take the 266FSB CPUs I gave up and built a brand new monster...

You can use the 266MHz FSB Athlons in a system only running at 200MHz FSB; it will underclock the CPU to 75% of its rated speed. So if you wanted it to run at 1.4GHz, you'd have to get roughly a 1.85GHz CPU which would be about 80-90 bucks. My Athlon was doing this, running at only 200MHz FSB for about a month after I did a BIOS update. The update reset the FSB speed to its default and I didn't notice until I ran DXDIAG that it wasn't running at the higher speed.  

[TB613]

Unfortunately What's_in_a_name the original A7V is one of the few Asus boards that cannot take a 266 FSB CPU since it is limited to the Thunderbird CPU's. My new computer rocks although it is much pickier about the updates from Windows Update requiring a restore point before each update.  

[Captain KoraH]

I was looking at the A7V when I built my last PC. In the end I think I went with the P4B266 because of all the on-board components that would free up PCI slots and USB ports, and the on board RAID feature. The next MB I got was a departure from my normal habits though, the NVidia Nforce2 chipset was hard to pass up. I guess it's becoming the standard now.