Alienware DDR 400?

Why is Alienware, supposed to be top notch, certainly top price, selling their systems w/DDR@400? Any reason? Seems slow and less efficient power wise.

 

They have not felt the need to update yet. Alienware is pretty slow to support new hardware.

 

I do not know where to start with that question.

1) Alienware does not make their notebooks, they just re-brand them with an alien head and new paint job. And they install the custom config that a customer wants.

2) the RAM is not determined by being top-notch or not, rather it is depending on the motherboard's capabilities.

3) True that DDR400 is a bit outdated, but there are still high-end systems available (mainly AMD) that still uses DDR400...

 

DDR-400 is basically the king of DDR. I paid through the teeth to get 512MB of DDR-400 four years ago, but that was four years ago. Due to constraints of the processor and chipset of Alienware's machines, some of them are still tied to DDR.

 

Ergo why charge so much, you gave me a very good heads up on my M-tech post, thanks!

Now DDR 400 is @400? yes/no, and yes they are using AMD. I think my DDR2@533 4300 sodimm is faster, am I wrong?

Is there anything good that can be said about Alienware, seem behind the times and expensive.

 

DDR 400 does run at 200 Mhz, meaning its effective speed is 400 MHz. Performance between DDR 400 and DDR2 PC4200/4300 will depend alot on the application used. Latencies on faster frequency RAM tend to be higher, and it can affect performance. DDR 400 generally has a CAS latency of 3, whereas DDR2 PC4200/4300 will have a CAS latency of 4. The difference isn't much, but in applications where lower latency is favoured, the DDR RAM may perform faster. It mostly depends on the application, but most will favour the DDR2 RAM.