When originally introduced, RDRAM quite
redundant and pretty much useless as the Pentium 3 couldn't take advantage of
the added memory bandwidth. With the Pentium 4 things are totally different. SDRAM with
has a rather puny 1.08 GB/s worth of bandwidth and can't keep a P4 which requires 3.2 GB/s
happy. Currently only PC800 RDRAM can do that.
With two sticks of 128MB Samsung PC800 RDRAM retailing for about $140 CDN each,
it's just a tad more expensive then quality 256MB PC2100 DDR RAM. The RIMMS do
have a heat spreader to help cool things down but during testing even with the
memory running at a 112 MHz FSB the memory didn't generate that much heat.
From what we've seen so far, Pentium 4's and RDRAM are still
among the best of buddies, and the Samsung RIMM's performed fairly well in this regard.
Overclockability was good, but not out of the ordinary.