If you have been following our memory analysis for the past month or so, you will realize that DDR1 is clearly the choice over DDR2, at least for now. DDR1 is simply too mature when it comes to directly comparing it with DDR2. However, it is not anyone's fault and we can't blame anyone for the perfomance competition between the previous generation and next generation products. Intel was right in its own defense; it had to introduce newer and higher performing products in order to compete with AMD, but apparently their strategy didn't work as well as they hoped it would. The futuristic products from Intel will have to wait for quite sometime in order to get serious attention from the enthusiast community. The PCIe graphics interface, DDR2 for memory, newer Intel microprocessors, and Intel's on-board audio chip were all introduced at the same time and none of these, with the exception of Azalia, Intel's next generation of on-board audio chips, are mature enough to justify their prices. There are simply no performance gains and the price-to-performance ratio is rather poor at this stage. On the more positive side, however, the introduction of newer technologies has caused the prices to fall on the previous technologies to an extent. Anyone who is looking to build a new system will be glad to know that the market is still going strong for the i875P chipsets with Intel's P4 Northwood core processors, AGP video cards, and most importantly, at least for the basis of this article, DDR1 memory.

Industry leaders such as Corsair, OCZ, and others have set the standard and are continuing to produce memory products that look promising. This ensures that the last generation of products are here to stay in the market, especially the DDR1 system memory. In a conference call we attended with Samsung, Intel, and IBM, all three agreed that DDR1 memory will be serious until the second half of 2005. This confirms that Intel was aware of the slow adoption process by the community, but still went ahead and introduced the their inferior performing products in the market. Of course, this means that Intel will be strong in the second half of next year, but we will have to wait and see for that. While DDR1 market was swept away by the introduction of low-latency memory chips or TCCDs from Samsung, the development of higher speed system memory such as PC3500 and upwards is still in the process. Recently OCZ announced their PC3700 Rev. 3 Gold series of memory and SimpleTech, a rather new contender, is still offering their PC3500, PC3700, and PC4000 in full force.

SimpleTech announced their Nitro series of gaming memory a while back with only three offerings - PC3500, PC3700, and PC4000. Like other newcomers, SimpleTech decided to try their luck with enthusiasts. After all, it isn't too difficult to start your own line of gaming memory. All you need, briefly speaking, are high performance memory chips, most likely from Samsung or Hynix, an attention catching name such as Nitro series, and a production plant. We must admit that SimpleTech excelled in all three of the above stated requirements for the gaming memory, but performance and price are a major concern when it comes to purchasing high speed memory. How well did SimpleTech's Nitro series perform in our suite of memory tests? Is it fast enough to keep up with its competition? Read on and find out...