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DDR vs DDR2: why paying twice for memory and mboard???

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anduins

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DDR vs DDR2: why paying twice for memory and mboard???

PostThu Sep 30, 2004 6:49 am

Please read this article on DDR vs DDR2 (and look at the benchmarks in it too):

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Articles/DDR_vs_DDR2/

It says:

"
Another thing to take notice of are the latencies; they (those of DDR2) are double those of DDR.
"
(I admit I don't know what kind of latencies are those ones)

and

"
When you get right down to it, for today's performance the differences between using DDR and DDR2 at 533MHz, there is little to no difference.
"
(and looking at that article benchmarks this seems true!)

so probably the best thing to do is to buy DDR 400Mhz, that is just half expensive than DDR2 and also motherboard's cost is half. So with 550 euros is possible to buy 2GB of DDR memory and a good DDR motherboard for an AMD 64 chip... Am I right? While 2GB of DDR2 and a DDR2 motherboard would cost about 1000 euros. So almost 500 euro more for the same "hauptwerk result".

The only problem is that in future DDR2 will be the choice and so thinking about an upgradeable system maybe DDR2 is better. Anyway it looks like that DDR 400Mhz is the same as DDR2 400 Mhz (the article compares DDR 400Mhz with DDR2 533Mhz).

The higher latency in DDR2 probably will erase the advantages of the fastest memory, making DDR and DDR2 PRACTICALLY THE SAME IN HAUPTWERK. Am I right? I'm not saying that DDR and DDR2 are the same in general, but that they are the same in hauptwerk.

I'm just guessing, can anyone say anything more sure about that?

(anyway I don't trust pc upgrades, I think best thing is waiting a couple of years more and buy a new pc instead of upgrading a pc today, unless the upgrade's cost is small)
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afwen

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PostThu Sep 30, 2004 7:49 am

Regardless of the relative speed of DDR vs. DDR2, I think that the speed of your RAM is irrelevant to Hauptwerk's performance.

-Alvin
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anduins

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PostThu Sep 30, 2004 9:18 am

Could you please explain me why? Thanks.
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afwen

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PostThu Sep 30, 2004 9:59 am

To precisely answer this question one would of course have to run Hauptwerk on the same system with different types of memory to determine whether there are perceptible performance differences. Failing this, here is my unscientific reasoning:

Low-end memory chips these days are rated around PC2100. This means that they are capable of moving 2100 megabytes (2.1 GB) per second. This rate is 25,000 times faster than the rate needed by the sound card to play Hauptwerk samples. Put another way, this low-end memory chip could retrieve one second of a Hauptwerk sample 25 times in one millisecond.

Anyway, this is my speculation, not based on any actual testing.

-Alvin
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anduins

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PostThu Sep 30, 2004 10:12 am

Mmmh... I can't do my own tests yet, anyway it looks like you're right.

In hauptwerk the memory is "enough fast" even if it's slow. The processor makes the difference. The processor plus the motherboard.

So the memory is like a place were to store samples and even a slow one is simply FASTER than the super fast hard disk imaginable, am I right? I mean: using samples from memory is REALLY better than using ones from hard disk.

So any memory will be good, so a DDR is more than really good!

Thanks.
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NeilCraig

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PostThu Sep 30, 2004 4:10 pm

The facts speak for themselves:

I can run the Stereo St Anne's on full organ on an Athlon 1800+ with 1.5GB of

PC133

and no problems with latency, or should I say 30ms latency which doesn't feel too laggy. In this configuration I have XP booting into 83MB of RAM, I have my services as streamlined as I dare, no networking, AV, or firewall and no user processes (excluding MidiYoke) running.

My weakpoints are my AC97 sound (sounds perfectly good through a £1000 amp and £1000+ of speakers, however) and my CPU.
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GDay

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83MB RAM!

PostThu Sep 30, 2004 7:10 pm

Hello Neil,
How are you using only 83MB RAM???
GDay
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anduins

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PostFri Oct 01, 2004 3:13 am

NeilCraig wrote:The facts speak for themselves:
I can run the Stereo St Anne's on full organ on an Athlon 1800+ with 1.5GB of

PC133


Hi! Since I don't need DDR2 memory I could buy 2GB for about 200 euro and I'm done. In the future, if 24 or more bit samples will be used 2GB will turn to 1GB (I mean an organ that today fits in 1GB will need 2GB to run because of the larger samples size). Anyway this would require also a better machine, so I think that 2GB is the good choice for now.

Yes, tell us how to have a so low memory usage by XP.

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