SDRAM vs. RDRAM, Facts and Fantasy

Intel's decision to chain the Pentium processor to RDRAM system memory has raised quite a controversy. This article will get into greater detail about Rambus, SDRAM, RDRAM and the relationship between Intel and Rambus and why both these companies keep backing their technologies.

We'll address most of the issues that generally seem to be considered 'disadvantages' of Rambus technology and investigate whether these are based on fact or fantasy. At times we'll go deeper into technical detail than some of you might be willing to follow, in order to prove a point or accurately describe a specific function. But overall we’ve tried to keep the technical details and analysis to a minimum and as basic and straightforward as possible. However, we’ve made sure that our benchmarking setup, the suite of benchmarks used, and our technical analysis is reproducible by anyone wishing to do so. We at HardwareCentral always aim to keep our benchmarks and reviews as objective as possible, and this SDRAM vs. RDRAM article is no exception.

In the following pages you'll find an in-depth analysis of Rambus' RDRAM, what makes it tick, what the benefits are and above all we'll look into its technological advantages, as those will most likely determine whether RDRAM is worthwhile or not. The analysis will be followed by a discussion of benchmarks and why we’ve chosen to use this specific set, as well as an analysis on how each particular benchmark makes use of system resources.

We'll round off this article with a broad range of real world benchmarks, aimed at exploring the technological advantages and disadvantages as pointed out in the theoretical analysis of the previous pages, checking theory with practice. And, naturally, the conclusion will summarize the results as well as give our verdict on SDRAM vs. RDRAM.

Skip To Page • 1 Introduction 2 Rambus Direct RDRAM 3 Conventional Memory Systems 4 RDRAM Benefits 5 Reducing System Cost 6 RDRAM Pricing 7 RDRAM Pricing Continued 8 RDRAM Performance 9 RDRAM Performance Continued 10 System Performance 11 RDRAM Power Consumption 12 Benchmark Applications 13 BAPCo SYSmark 2000 14 Benchmark Setup 15 Benchmark Results Intel 440BX 16 Benchmark Results VIA 694X Apollo Pro 133A 17 Benchmark Results Intel i820 18 Benchmark Evaluation 19 Conclusion

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