Weekly Memory Prices - Week of Mar 24, 2002 - Page 2

Weekly Memory Prices

SDRAM

Another week, and another weekly price guide full of ups and downs. Since the beginning of this year, we've seen memory prices take frequent but small jumps upwards in price. Most weekly updates have been chock full of $1 and -$1 changes, but this week in SDRAM we see bigger price change numbers on a lot fewer modules. PC133 ECC 512mb is up $10 to $123.00. PC100 CAS2 ECC 256mb went up $4 to $83.00 and PC133 CAS2 128mb dropped in price by $1. Other than those changes, the SDRAM prices remain unchanged.

DDR SDRAM

Thanks to one reader's quick eye, we've dropped a couple of Crucial.com's PC2100 prices in favor of Kingston memory from Mwave.com. Other than our listing new prices found at Mwave, though, we don't see anything else in our DDR SDRAM prices change this week.

RDRAM

For quite some time, Pentium 4 owners were being slammed with high prices on RDRAM; but thankfully when you look at the overall trend, the prices on this type of memory are still coming down. This week in RDRAM prices, we see either slight price drops or no price changes at all - which I'm sure we will agree is better than increasing prices. PC800 512mb went down in price by $2 and PC800 128mb went up by $1.

Overall

In light of recent price increases, seeing memory prices remain constant is as much consumers can really ask for. Since memory prices can go up and down, daily, depending on market conditions and availability, we suggest you use our guide only to provide you with an idea on where prices are heading. Many vendors also state that their price is specifically for a phone order, you should be reminded, while others offer the lowest prices on online orders.

Do yourselves a favor and check prices again before deciding whether or not to buy, as prices have been changing (usually increasing) so quickly that most of this guide is unlikely to remain accurate for a day, let alone a week. We can all hope for some better prices on memory for consumers next week... but unfortunately, I wouldn't count on it!

Vangie"Aurora" Beal
News & Interviews Editor