AMD to Enter RAM Market with Radeon-branded DDR3
by Kristian Vättö on August 8, 2011 4:25 AM ESTAMD's website suggests that the company will be entering the RAM market soon with their own RAM modules. The modules will be branded as Radeon, just like AMD's GPUs. At first, AMD will launch three series: Entertainment, ULTRA PRO Gaming and Enterprise. All three will have the same density of 2GB and are based on the DDR3 standard, but the speeds will vary. The Entertainment series is 1333MHz and the ULTRA PRO Gaming series is 1600MHz. Timings are 9-9-9 and 11-11-11 respectively. All three series also share the voltage of 1.5V. The speeds of the Enterprise series are to be announced. Obviously, AMD claims that their memory is the most ideal for their APU and CPU systems but at least the specifications are no different from other manufacturers' RAM.
The more interesting fact is that the actual DRAM chips are also made by AMD. AMD hasn't been into the DRAM business before (or if they have, they have been very quiet about it), so this is a surprise. However, it is possible that the chips have just been rebranded and thus been manufactured by another company, but unfortunately we don't know any details at this point.
Update: Back in 2010, we did see MSI GeForce 210 with ATI DDR2, but we never found out why.
Pricing and availability are unknown, but the Entertainment series modules are already on sale in Japan (hence the pictures).
Update 2: NCIX is selling the 2GB Entertainment series modules for 9.99CAD (~$10.11) each, which actually makes them the most inexpensive 1333MHz 2GB modules in NCIX. However, this is with 10CAD rebate so the retail price might be closer to 20CAD per 2GB. NCIXUS doesn't seem to sell these yet though, hence US availability is still uncertain.
22 Comments
View All Comments
nofumble62 - Monday, August 8, 2011 - link
Putting a brand onto someone's product won't make it cheaper.So who would buy these? Only two possibility
1. either an AMD fanboi
2. idiot don't know anything better.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, August 9, 2011 - link
The PCB should most definitely be red. What were they thinking? Without it, it looks like any generic RAM just with a sticker.Red PCB, AMD. Come on! Maybe a cute looking red heatspreader. Have some imagination!