It had been quite some time that I did not comment price variations of electronic components. It was easy and acceptable: Everybody could observe the slow price fall under the pressure of recession. But there is a change worth mentioning (and not only the stabilization of LCD prices): DDR3-type of DRAM memory should see a significant price rise during July 2009. According to DRamExchange, we could also expect a 30% hike by the year’s end.
Those elements resulting from the observation of long-term markets and futures, they have quite good reliability. But if the recession does not seem ready to end, why this move up? As a matter of fact, memory buyers are probably preparing themselves for the arrival of the new Windows 7 and its unavoidable additional resource demands. Furthermore, while many processors (specially from AMD, but not only) may be using DDR3 memory but also older DDR2 with no perceivable performance loss, the transition from DDR2 to DDR3 is slowly happening. And this is pushing DDR3 quantities up.
So, if you have a clear need today, I would recommend you to buy your DDR3 memory now. But if you think that you can use DDR2 memory (if you have to ask, that’s your situation), you’d better wait for the relative price slowdown that will be happening on DDR2.