Whatever innovation needed to happen has most likely happened for the year 2005 with DDR2 memory. Back in January at CES 2005, memory makers suggested this year to be fairly positive in terms of DDR2 development with speed bumps, price cuts and overall market adoption (from a manufacturer’s perspective). Thus far, we have seen the alleged introduction of DDR2 at 800MHz+ speeds, memory prices are fairly affordable and market adoption is on the rise albeit profit margins are dropping due to such low prices for memory makers, but that’s not something you, as a customer, needs to worry about. With that said, it looks like memory makers are pretty much done with the aforementioned concepts for the remainder of this year. We recently had the chance to interview OCZ Technology and here’s what it had to say in response to a few of our questions.

Where is the memory industry headed (DDR1 and DDR2) in the near future?
I personally feel that the industry is in a holding pattern. DDR1 sales remain strong, in part due to the extreme popularity of the AMD Athlon 64 platform in the enthusiast community. With the introduction of Intel’s dual-core and aggressive pricing for all Intel processors, the interest in DDR2 is slowly picking up. In 2006, when AMD moves to a DDR2 compatible memory controller, we should see a substantial surge in DDR2 sales.  After that DDR1 should remain a viable product for upgrades for some time.

Can we expect price cuts for the remainder of this year?
Honestly, I believe that prices are about as low as they can go on DDR1 modules at this time. Now is the time to buy memory, as prices may go up, but there is not much room to go down. As always, OCZ has been very competitive with its pricing and is passing reduced costs on to our valued customers.

Can we expect another speed boost with DDR2 this year?
DDR2 speeds should remain the same through the remainder of 2005. The real focus at OCZ is lowering DDR2 latencies; by improving memory timings, we feel the highest performance gains are seen. Of course we are always looking for new DDR2 chips that will run at faster speeds with tight timings. Rest assured that OCZ has its DDR2 development program in full swing and we currently have some great offerings for the Intel fans. We will be more than ready for the AMD migration to DDR2 in 2006.

Click here for the full interview.