News RAM costs might be on the up

[WilHarris]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/12...osts_increase/

[MrWillyWonka]

Certianly bad news, a bit of price fixing isn't good at all, luckily I'm probably not going to buy any new RAM or components until 2007 at the earliest.

This could have implications in the rest of the market, RAM is a complementary good, meaning this RAM is useless without other components, if supply is going down, demand for mobos and cpu etc will also decrease, which then causes prices to increase etc... it's a cycle.

First LCD prices in the EU are gonna go up, now RAM, looks like 2006 is going to be an expensive year?

[Kipman725]

I doubt it will make more than a few pence differance, in 94 a factory that made ram caught fire and went our of production for a few months. The ram price only went up a few pence per mb.

[valium]

Sounds like big business trying to raise prices, in which case another company will come along with a better/cheaper product and force them to cut costs and have an excess supply of ram that wont be sold leaving them with useless product.

[cpemma]

Originally Posted by Kipman725

I doubt it will make more than a few pence differance, in 94 a factory that made ram caught fire and went our of production for a few months. The ram price only went up a few pence per mb.

Around August 1999, finding 128 megs of SDRAM for only $40 was not uncommon, which was about 1/3 of what RAM cost just a few months earlier. However, that September an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale rocked Taiwan, temporarily crippling the the world's largest supplier of semiconductors and triggering a series of events that caused the most rapid increase in RAM prices in history. Within a few months, that same 128 megs of RAM sold for $200-250, over a five-fold increase in price.

Since that huge spike in late '99, we've already gone through a cycle-and-a-half. Prices went back down to normal around March 2000 (at which time I bought 128 megs of PC100 RAM for only $55), only to spike again, almost tripling by mid-summer.

http://www.epinions.com/cmd-review-5...39FBA267-prod1

RAM is the most price-volatile thing in a computer. I see I paid £57 (+VAT) for 2x256Mb Corsair VS PC3200 14 months ago, now it's down to around £30 (+VAT), but the CPU I bought the same day has hardly moved in price despite all the advances. Maybe time to add 512Mb.

[Kipman725]

lol I guess it did make a differance cpemma, sorry If I misled anyone I was young at the time and my vists to the computer shop so infrequant that I must have missed out the price hike.

[Constructacon]

Originally Posted by valium

Sounds like big business trying to raise prices, in which case another company will come along with a better/cheaper product and force them to cut costs and have an excess supply of ram that wont be sold leaving them with useless product.

It would be nice if that was the case. They're already set up which means that they have the upper hand. They want to squeeze the prices up at the moment so they do. They're per unit manufacturing prices haven't really gone up by much - nothing like the margin they are attempting to squeeze.

Any new player is going to have to combat set up costs and an innitial design/testing that these guys have already done. This will have to be factored into this new player's pricing. At which point the old chip manufacturers can drop their prices back down to just below what the new people can produce them for, applying muscle on them in the market place and still making a tidyer profit margin. Once the new player bows out I see the cycle starting again. I hate greed.

[Fozzy]

They need to try marketing. Right now everyone is convinced that 512mb is the absolute minimum and 1gb is where you should be at. They should push for 1gb to be the standard and for 2gb to be where you should be. This would solve alot of problems and make it more affordable to bump up to 1gb per stick

[FIBRE+]

Yer I remember that year, there were only 2 or 3 other large suppliers at that point wernt there (im probably making this up). Price doubled within a few weeks at my local store

I really pees me off when the big boys mess around with prices, bit of a guessing game sometimes when to buy certain things... do I grab this deal now even tho I can't really afford it, or do I wait until I can afford it then possibly get stung when prices go up without warning

Like the pic and caption

[TJK]

dumb question, but what is the differences and advantages of DDR and DDR2

[hitman012]

Originally Posted by TJK

dumb question, but what is the differences and advantages of DDR and DDR2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2

[cpemma]

Originally Posted by TJK

dumb question, but what is the differences and advantages of DDR and DDR2

Bearing in mind it was a year ago, a head-to-head review.

Why the annoyance at RAM price? Save the anger for the duopolists AMD & Intel, for keeping processors so expensive when memory, in the longer term, has got very much cheaper. Constructacon claimed "an initial design/testing that these guys have already done" should make RAM cheap to produce. Memory design is continually changing to keep up with cpu speeds.

[Nature]

Originally Posted by cpemma

Maybe time to add 512Mb.

Considering you can get 2 gigs of PC 3200 for under 150 USD, I'd agree

[Adnuo]

Haven't RAM companies been challenged in the past for price fixing?

[frodo]

well, its stupid, seeing as the new iRams and stuff are coming out, it means they wont be selling to well, as they rely on ddr2 (the new iram2's do anyways)

i guess im still happy, bought this ocz bh5 for £130, and its still £130, so i guess i bought at the right time!

im always in the guessing game of do i buy it now when its at that price, or do i get it later when the newer stuff comes out.... *its what im doing with the x1800's, im waiting for the x1900 to come out, so the prices drop - see... im relying on the price drop!*

[DXR_13KE]

This realy realy REALY sucks! they are gona loose a lot of cash and factories will close and people will become un-empoyed, the same is happening here, prices are going up and salaries are frozen, result = a BIG incresse in un-employment and a BIG!!! decrece in tax revenews to the state, so next year they will increce the prices further to recebe more tax the problem is that they will receve less tax.LOL
Politicians are F....... dumb and F......... gready!!!!!

[Constructacon]

Originally Posted by cpemma

Constructacon claimed "an initial design/testing that these guys have already done" should make RAM cheap to produce. Memory design is continually changing to keep up with cpu speeds.

Correct. Although I was talking about making a comparable product. In theory they should be head to head on new products but an older company in any field should be more efficient at getting a new product out as they are already meant to know what they are doing. In theory.

Meh. maybe you're right. Perhaps it could be a win for us consumers after all if someone else got in the game.

[cpemma]

Originally Posted by DXR_13KE

This realy realy REALY sucks! they are gona loose a lot of cash and factories will close and people will become un-empoyed, the same is happening here, prices are going up and salaries are frozen, result = a BIG incresse in un-employment and a BIG!!! decrece in tax revenews to the state, so next year they will increce the prices further to recebe more tax the problem is that they will receve less tax.LOL
Politicians are F....... dumb and F......... gready!!!!!

I suggest you read the link and then tell us where the politicians get into the act, and the death of civilisation as we know it. Or have you lost the "14% EU tax on LCDs" thread?

Contract prices for banker double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM modules have fallen 22 percent since September when compared to the previous three months, the researcher said in a statement.

The price for DDR2, which processes data faster dipped by about 32 percent, it said.

Now that's not sustainable to any company if the drop has "pushed them into the red, or to the brink of losses", which is what happens with cut-throat competition. Been there, done that, got the redundancy.

Storm in a teacup. RAM is cheap. Buy some.

[DXR_13KE]

Here were i live if the EU says "increse 14%" our leaders say "the EU said to increse to 16%".
And the tax here for pcs and stuff like that is 21% plus the other small taxes from the transport and handling and stuff like that, this means that here a RAM that costs 40€ in France or any were else, here it seels for 60€ or more and about 40% of that goes to the pokets and bank acounts of politicians LOL

[serial_]

This is definitely not good. Especially when I am saving to make a huge upgrade to my system, and will be buying 4GB of ram to load my new mb. If there's even a $5 hike per stick, i'm out an extra $20. I don't know about most of you, but having an extra $20 in my pocket wouldn't be so bad. Now let's say it really spikes, then i'm really screwed.

And now that i've said that it will most likely shoot up like a crackhead.

- serial_