Compare DDR2 and DDR3 | Important differences

At one time, DDR RAM became a real break­through not only in a pro­fes­sion­al envi­ron­ment — users appre­ci­at­ed not only a fash­ion­able, but also an incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive device. And the appear­ance of the sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tions made it pos­si­ble to talk about super speeds. So, what exact­ly is DDR2 and DDR3, how do you tell them apart, and which ver­sion is bet­ter? Our experts fig­ured out the answer.

Features of DDR RAM

All the pre­de­ces­sors of the DDR that became the ref­er­ence, used until 1995, at one time seemed to be those “tough guys”. But when the DIMM or the so-called SDRam appeared, a new era grad­u­al­ly began to gain ground in the world of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy — the era of high-speed devices. SDRam last­ed until 2001 and was built into almost all sold by Intel and Celeron.

This type of RAM was replaced by DDRs that cre­at­ed a real stir. Unlike the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion RAMs, their work was accel­er­at­ed not by dou­bling the clock fre­quen­cy, but by trans­fer­ring data twice in one cycle.

But our top­ic today is not the first Dou­ble Data Rate, but the sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tions of this RAM. Speak­ing of DDR2, one can­not fail to note the pres­ence of a much faster bus in it, as well as the abil­i­ty to trans­fer data on both slices, and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly from four places. In addi­tion, com­pared to the first gen­er­a­tion RAM, DDR2 has less “appetite”, con­sum­ing lit­tle pow­er, and at the same time cools very quick­ly.

Main fea­tures of DDR2:

1. The max­i­mum data trans­fer fre­quen­cy is 800 MHz (in rare cas­es, there are mod­els over­clocked to 1066 MHz). By the way, the high­er this indi­ca­tor, the faster the infor­ma­tion will be processed, there­fore, there will be more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty;

2. Tim­ing (allows you to deter­mine the delay time of the RAM) — for a mod­el with a max­i­mum clock fre­quen­cy (533 MHz), this fig­ure is 4–4‑4–12.

3. Pow­er con­sump­tion (1 bar) — about 1.8 V;

4. The max­i­mum pos­si­ble amount of mem­o­ry is 16 GB (ser­i­al moth­er­boards), less often — 32 GB (main­ly serv­er boards).

At one time, the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion RAM was con­sid­ered the most effec­tive of the exist­ing options. But tech­nol­o­gy does not stand still: it was replaced by DDR3, the devel­op­ers of which did their best, reduc­ing pow­er con­sump­tion by an incred­i­ble 15%. In the com­put­er com­po­nent mar­ket, you can find a mod­i­fied ver­sion of DDR3 marked “L”, indi­cat­ing an even low­er lev­el of pow­er con­sump­tion.

Main fea­tures of DDR3:

1. The max­i­mum data trans­fer fre­quen­cy is 2400 MHz (there are already mod­els on the mar­ket over­clocked to 3000 MHz);

2. Tim­ing — for a mod­el with a max­i­mum clock fre­quen­cy (1200 MHz), this fig­ure is 10–10-10–30.

3. Pow­er con­sump­tion (1 bar) — 1.5 V, in DDR3L vari­eties — 1.35 V;

4. The max­i­mum pos­si­ble amount of mem­o­ry is not lim­it­ed (the start­ing mark is 64 GB). Is it true that such fig­ures are in demand? But that’s anoth­er ques­tion.

Again, a mod­est “appetite” is not the most impor­tant thing in DDR3: of course, it’s all about effi­cien­cy. How­ev­er, the third gen­er­a­tion is no longer the mar­ket leader. It was replaced by a new mod­el of RAM type Dou­ble Data Rate — DDR4. But today is not about her.

Comparison of DDR2 and DDR3

The main dif­fer­ences between these two types of RAM are as fol­lows:

1. 
   Clock fre­quen­cy — DDR3 RAM boasts a high­er rate of 1200 MHz, which is 2 times high­er than the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion RAM (533 MHz).

2. 
   Band­width — for third-gen­er­a­tion RAM (DDR3), it is much high­er than for the sec­ond (DDR2), while the lev­el of ener­gy con­sumed is very low (it increas­es slight­ly when over­clock­ing the proces­sor).

3. 
   Phys­i­cal con­fig­u­ra­tion — a clear exter­nal dif­fer­ence between the types of RAMs under con­sid­er­a­tion (dif­fer­ent slots) also affect­ed com­pat­i­bil­i­ty — it is sim­ply absent. Due to the lat­ter fea­ture of the two devices, we do not rec­om­mend installing DDR2 and DDR3 on the same moth­er­board.

ON A NOTE. Today, man­u­fac­tur­ers offer users to pur­chase so-called hybrids, the pecu­liar­i­ty of which, as you might guess from the name, is the com­bi­na­tion of two types of RAM on one device. Such prod­ucts have con­nec­tors imme­di­ate­ly for 2 types of RAM. But it must be tak­en into account that they can only be used sep­a­rate­ly.

Which option to choose for your­self? It all depends on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the com­put­er device, the require­ments for the speed of RAM, as well as the tasks that will be per­formed. For most users, DDR2 is a great solu­tion, which is ful­ly jus­ti­fied. For those who have increased requests for such details, it is bet­ter to pay atten­tion to DDR3.