Now that the DDR2 memory is already in the stores, motherboard manufacturers have already prepared for their arrival and many of their boards already support it. The main question is whether you need to upgrade the DDR memory to DDR2 or should I wait?
The main advantages of DDR2 against its younger brother are the data transfer rate which jumped from 400 Mbps to 667 and low power consumption but supposedly, due to the high speed, the timings were "sacrificed" and made twice as slow as the DDR timings.
The overclockercafe site published a comparison between the two types of memories. The comparison was made using Corsair-made memories. As DDR memory, the TwinX PC3200XL and DDR2 memory are selected as the new PC5400 units. In comparison, memory bandwidth and memory performance were measured in Far Cry and UT2004 games. The DDR2 memory bandwidth was expected to be higher due to the high data transfer rate, but the improvement in FPS was only a few frames and was found to be extremely negligible.
In the comparison, an attempt was also made to speed up the two types of memories, although the board on which the comparison was made does not support changing the timings and as a result the comparison writer was able to speed up the DDR memories by a few megahertz. The writer, on the other hand, managed to reach a maximum bass of 2MHz with DDR607 memories before the system "crashed" (although this speed is lower than the estimated speed of the 675MHz memory).
By comparison, it can be concluded that today there is no need to replace the DDR memories you have because only in the future will there be applications that know how to take advantage of the large bandwidth of DDR2. However, if you are planning to buy new memories soon, you should choose DDR2 to save extra money in the future and due to its good overclocking capabilities.
