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.
The DDR3 price drops may be slowing down a bit, but it remains the most active segment of the memory market. This week we found twelve price cuts that reached double digits, including three of $40 or more: Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2000 2x1-GB (-$69), Mushkin DDR3-1800 2x1-GB (-$61) and Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 DHX 2x2-GB (-$51). A $45 cut to OCZ Titanium DDR3-1600 2x2-GB certainly doesn't look bad either. There was only a single price increase of relevance, as OCZ Flex II DDR3-2000 2x1-GB spiked by $13. The overall DDR3 chart continued to shed triple-digits, and this week displayed a $375 aggregate chart decrease.