what advantages would I have going with the Dell Studio XPS16 with DDR3 ram over an HP with DDR2 ram? I have read a bunch of very technical stuff on here which unfortunately I don't really understand. I plan on having this computer for about 4 years hopefully. If I get DDR2 will it be outdated in the very near future? Will I benefit myself by getting the DDR3?
-
ddr3 uses less power. main thing is this, ddr3 does not fit in ddr2 sockets. so in the future it wont be possible to upgrade to ddr3.
-
There's not much worth noting between DDR2 and DDR3. As metroline mentioned, the two are physically incompatible with each other, and DDR3 draws slightly less power. Also, DDR3 is generally a bit faster in terms of frequency, but it's extremely unlikely that the naked eye would notice this anyway.
Long story short, don't let DDR2 vs. DDR3 be the deciding factor of your purchase. -
cool. thanks for the replies
-
Also theres a price difference if you plan on upgrading your ram.
-
DDR3 RAM is quite a bit more expensive at the moment compared to DDR2. You may experience higher RAM latencies but should gain a higher bandwidth on the RAM in exchange. The primary benefit (assuming the comparison is 800MHz DDR2 vs. 1066MHz DDR3) as said will be slightly less power consumption. On the other hand, if you compare DDR2 clocked at 400MHz to DDR3 clocked at 1333MHz there will be obvious performance differences but I'd say the vast majority of new computers have DDR2 clocked at 800MHz followed by a few clocked at 667MHz. There won't really be any benefits of DDR3 unless you decide to upgrade your RAM around the time DDR3's replacement becomes popular (driving the price of DDR3 memory down) by which time DDR2 may become more expensive to obtain.
Studio XPS16 with DDR3
Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by skratchmo, Jun 12, 2009.