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  • xrror - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    Sadly if this is anything like the DDR2 - DDR3 transition, this also marks the point where DDR3 will start becoming more expensive as manufacturing capacity shifts to DDR4.

    So now is the time to buy that 16GB DDR3 >1833 CAS 9 kit before they become unobtainable.
  • austinsguitar - Thursday, February 25, 2016 - link

    ^very true
  • Samus - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    Yep. It'll be interesting to figure out what time to stock up on DDR3. My guess is within the next few months because by the end of the year there won't be any DDR3 systems sold at retail (except perhaps old inventory)
  • Harry Lloyd - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    Yeah, I bought 16 GiB DDR3-1600 CL9 for my Haswell Xeon back in December. I will not be switching to Skylake anytime soon, maybe not even Cannonlake. It all depends on how the i7 CPUs will be utilized in DX12 games, hopefully they will have good multithreading support.
  • watzupken - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    Question is why would you bother to buy DDR3 at this point time? As someone has pointed out, it is considered an obsolete standard by now since the future is clearly DDR4. You may get it cheap now, but find no use for them, and selling it may be tough too. If you have sufficient ram at the moment, I rather you just stick to them until you upgrade your systems next time. I won't even recommend stocking on DDR4 since if you look back at DDR3, the industry deliberately mess people up with a "new" DDR3L standard. Mobos and CPUs soon only support this standard rendering previous DDR3 obsolete when it should work perfectly fine.
  • DanNeely - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    The idea would be that if you have a haswell or older system you plan to keep for a few more years, now's the time to add more memory if you think you'll eventually need it.

    Knowing this point was coming I just went all out last year and plonked 32GB in mine from the start; but a system built 2 or 3 years ago would almost certainly have less. If 32GB will actually be needed by anyone who isn't pushing their system exceptionally hard (between >100 tabs across multiple browsers, games and boinc running in the background; I occasionally hit >15GB used on my old box, so 32 was a nobrainer for me) is another question.
  • bananaforscale - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    I just replaced the 4x 4GB 1600CL9 DDR3 memories with 8GB 2133CL11 ones and moved the 4GB DIMMs to less important computers and so on. Now I just want Zen to come out ASAP so there'll be fire sales to clear out any remaining 8 core FXes. :P (Currently have a hex-core Bulldozer, extra drop-in performance would be nice...)
  • jaden24 - Thursday, March 10, 2016 - link

    Thought about it, and just gonna build a new rig around Zen. 8GB will just have to suffice a little longer.
  • royalcrown - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    You just buy enough ram when you build the system in the first place and don't worry about looking for it before it's scarce years later.
  • Anato - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    Not everyone has the money bin to scoop. I know, its not much but buying 4(-8)GB in 2011 and now 16GB you can save around $100. Same goes for SSD.
  • StrangerGuy - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    The only reason DDR4 has fallen so fast to DDR3 levels is because the demand isn't that high to begin with. Which should come as no surprise because all signs point to non-soldered on RAM is now a sunset business.
  • name99 - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    in 2012, in response to the MacBook Pro (the first retina version) there were massive complaints that it came with soldered DRAM. I wrote a comment pointing out that people damn well better get used to soldered DRAM because that was where the future was headed --- and of course the response was as if I'd suggested that everybody go out and kick a kitten.

    So I guess we now have a time constant established! It takes about 3.5 years for an idea to go from "Apple is doing this new thing and it's the end of the world as we know it" to "everyone knows that old way of doing this is obsolete and on its last legs"...

    I think for the most part non-replacable batteries have gone down that same path already (of course, just like with DIMMs, there'll be the vocal minority that continue to insist their parrot is not dead long after the rest of the world has moved on). I think smartwatches are the product in the middle of this right now, about a year in.
    Let's check back in 2.5 years and see how many of the "I haven't own a watch since I was 12 and won't start now / if it doesn't cost $15,000 and contain diamonds and moving parts / smartwatches just don't have any real uses" crowd are still sticking with that story...
  • stephenbrooks - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    I reckon the future is soldered-on smartwatches.
  • Pix2Go - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link

    ↑↑ I'm sure Apple is working on this right now.
  • nandnandnand - Friday, February 26, 2016 - link

    16 GB is the new 8 GB! 8 GB is the new 4 GB!
  • Denithor - Tuesday, March 1, 2016 - link

    The gap between prices of 4 Gb DDR4 and DDR3 memory ICs on the spot market is now about 7 U.S. cents, leaving DDR4 just a little more expensive than its predecessor.


    Isn't the difference 7/10 of a US cent? $1.814 vs $1.807 is not 7 cents...

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