AMD gets into the RAM business

MUCH TO THE SURPRISE of consumers, AMD has quietly launched a very limited range of RAM products for consumers and graphics card manufacturers alike.

Radeon branded, the memory has already been spotted on sale in Japan and listed through several resellers.

The kit is being sold in the streets of Japan at a fairly affordable price - $13 for a 2GB DIMM - and doesn't really come off as flashy gear that you'd want to stick in your gaming machine. PC Watch snapped photos of some DDR 3 DIMMs on sale in Tokyo's tech quarter, which you can find here.

The memory shows AMD markings - you can find it listed at several retailers as "AMD Original Retail" - and comes as 2GB DDR3 DIMMs rated at DDR1333 with CAS 9-9-9 timings. There is also another piece of higher-rated memory, as well as a yet unseen "enterprise" product.

AMD has also put up a Memory page to go with this silent launch. The web page is rather devoid of information except some basic specifications on the desktop RAM. The company is also pitching GPU memory, or GDDR5 and DDR3, for its line of Radeon GPUs, and overstating the already obvious advantage of GDDR5 over DDR3.

Despite being populated with references to "gaming" memory and hyperbole about performance, it doesn't seem quite the kind of thing that will cause rugburns when you slot it into your PC. The Desktop RAM looks like very tame stuff, considering that the 1600MHz rated kit is likely to be the same make and build as the 1333MHz rated kit, only with higher timings, and the GPU memory also shows no features distinguishing it from memory put out by AMD's other partners Samsung and Hynix, which churn out GDDR5 memory chips in the gazillions.

RAM is a tricky business as it is, with every RAM maker crying a river about how DRAM prices are at a constant low and how it's hard to pay the bills. AMD, however, seems intent in throwing caution to the wind while pushing its Radeon branding and has silently launched these products. The real manufacturer - AMD has no manufacturing of its own these days - is yet to be discovered, but considering the existence of GDDR5, it narrows down the options to two or three players in the business.

With just one real desktop DRAM product and an unspecified enterprise product in the works, this initiative by AMD looks a bit like going for a dip in shark infested waters. Some have tried it and gotten away with merely some severe scarring, while others haven't been so lucky. µ