DDR2 as fast as Rambus shocker

WHILE SIS was telling us of its plans to continue Rambus support into the middle of next year (much to Intel's disdain, we understand) motherboard makers have been informing us that DDR2 is performing about as fast on the Intel platform as its proprietory predecessor, famous for being probably the most hated memory in the world.

The news will come as no shock to those who have been following the memory industry closely in recent times. They have observed that there is still a lot of life left in vanilla DDR, with the Front Side Bus speeds of the latest chips unable to keep pace with enthuiast RAM development without being overclocked.

It was suggested to us recently by a major enthusiast RAM manufacturer that DDR2 would offer little performance gain, but would serve as a product differentiator for Intel, as AMD are not planning to move to DDR2 any time soon - but, to your average punter, two has to be better than one right?

It will also give Intel time to find better implementations of the DDR2 technology before AMD eventually launches its solution next year.

Look for DDR2 to be announced in the Grantsdale chipset in the first half of next year, although it is not expected that product adoption will be quick.