Go with DDR3 urges Corsair CEO

THE TRANSITION TO DDR3 has been an easy one for punters and will get even more popular as its cost continues to spiral downards, claims Corsair co-founder and CEO, Andy Paul.

Paul noted that DDR3 had gone to market with almost no compatibility problems or performance glitches and that cost was rapidly becoming a non factor. "4GB or even 6GB of DDR3 is now easily within the component budget for a typical system build," said Paul, adding "In fact, you can buy 6GB of premium, overclocked Corsair memory for less than $100."

Although saying that it was Intel's core i7 CPU which was currently spearheading DDR3 take-up in the enthusiast community, Paul acknowledged that Corsair also expected the AMD Phenom II  "to help the transition".

Andy Paul tends to his vines

"For high performance, for ultimate bandwidth, and for compatibility with the future, you've got to go with DDR3," enthused Paul adding that Corsair's offerings were already hitting speeds of 2000 MHZ.

Whilst DDR2 was still good enough for most user applications, the Corsair chief pointed out it wasn't so much about a choice made on the RAM purchase level as one made on an overall system level.

"If it's a 65nm AMD Phenom processor or Core 2 Duo then it's going to be configured with DDR2 motherboards and memory. If a user goes with Core i7 or a new AMD Phenom II processor with DDR3, then he would pick a DDR3 motherboard and DDR3 memory," explained Paul.

Corsair's CEO also reckons DDR3 has already passed DDR2 in terms of latency, a key feature for enthusiast gamers.

Another point to bear in mind, according to Paul, is that whilst DDR3 does not fundamentally display higher density than DDR2, it is "better suited for denser memory in that it is now the focus of development technology for memory."

Paul said he saw a density 'sweet spot' as being "at least 6GB for three channel configurations, and at least 4GB for dual channel configurations," adding that by the year's end he expected to see a majority of dual channel builds transitioning to 8GB.

Confident that memory cost would continue to drop and that Windows 7 would encourage programmers to make apps and games to take advantage of 64-bit memory, Paul sees a bright future for Corsair's DDR3 offerings.

"Even now, many of our customers are populating machines with 12GB," he said also noting, "We are the leaders here and others tend to copy what we do".

For the full interview, go here. µ