Bang per buck
Robert Pearce (pictured), senior technical marketing specialist at Corsair, spoke to HEXUS.channel as Computex 2008 today to highlight what he considers to be a prime up sell opportunity for the channel.
Currently DDR2 memory is at a price point that requires an outlay of a mere £20-30 for a doubling of the standard-issue 2GB to 4GB. Pearce asserted that this will bring about a greater improvement in the performance of a PC than the same amount spent on upgrading a CPU or GPU.
“2GB is good enough for normal usage, but to achieve good levels of game play on the latest games you really need 4GB,” said Pearce. “A doubling of memory compared to a small improvement in graphics or CPUs represents the easiest up sell opportunity for the channel.”
While DDR3 is the future of memory, and definitely offers a performance advantage, it is felt that currently the bang per buck proposition offered by DDR2 is the most compelling proposition to all but the enthusiast end of the market.
This should all start to change with the introduction of Intel’s next generation CPU architecture – Nehalem – which will better utilise the benefits of DDR3. At the same time, the price of DDR3 will continue to drop, meaning that by next year DDR3 will become ever more desirable upgrade for the mainstream market.
