Intel has a long history of jumping on the bandwagon of emerging memory technologies, with these jumps ending in both success and failure. With the Intel P35 and G33 chipsets, the chip giant has formally adopted high-speed DDR3 memory in the 1066 to 1600 MHz range. This is an interesting move, and one accelerated by AMD and their powerful integrated memory controller. AMD is not making the move to DDR3 with their current Phenom platform, but will for the next-generation, so this market will Intel-only in the foreseeable future. Due to this, there are still fewer DDR3 modules on the open market, with most of these coming from the major players. The most popular DDR3 configurations are single 1GB/2GB modules or 2x1GB/2x2GB matched pair kits, and DDR3 clock speeds range from 1066 MHz to 2000 MHz.
Our previous price guide finally showed the DDR3 chart slowing down a bit, and falling more into line with the dual-channel DDR2 listings. We get back on track this week, with exactly half of our existing auctions showing a double-digit price drop. These included some very significant price cuts, like the Kingston HyperX DDR3-1375 1-GB (-$77), Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2000 2x1-GB (-$69), Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 DHX 2x2-GB (-$50), and Patriot Viper DDR3-1600 2x2-GB (-$50) listings. There was only one increase, a $7 price jump to OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600 2x1-GB, and the aggregate chart drop totaled $462 - a nice improvement over the -$169 chart decrease from our last guide.