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With the X38, Intel is continuing its push to migrate the market from DDR2 to DDR3.

The X38 still supports DDR2 memory as Intel could hardly afford to make the chipset exclusively DDR3 at this time -  the price premium currently attached to DDR3 memory is a major deterrent to the average enthusiast and certainly to people who want to maximize their gaming or performance bang for the buck. However Intel had three slides promoting DDR3 in the presentation:

Due to running at a lower voltage, I do not doubt that DDR3 has a 25% lower TDP when compared to DDR2 running at the same speed, however I am surprised that Intel is touting a mere 10% performance gain in going from DDR2-800 to DDR3-1333 - which is an apples to oranges comparison, and personally I do not find a 10% performance increase from memories running 66.7% faster compelling.

Intel is however correct that overclocked DDR3 can be significantly faster; in my latest tests, I've found that DDR3-1800 starts to turn in really good performance (more on this in my aforementioned OCZ DDR3-1800 analysis).

I am troubled by the constant comparison of DDR2-800 to DDR3-1333 as DDR2-800 is mainstream, and at this time DDR3-1333 is still almost considered to be performance memory... not to mention the price differential between DDR2-800 and DDR3-1333.

I do however totally agree with Intel that the long term potential of DDR3 is better, so their continued push to drive migration to DDR3 is actually the logical one for the future.

Here's the meat of the story:

DDR3-1066 is 1.4x the price of DDR2-1066, and 5x the cost of DDR2-667. Going by Intel's figures, DDR2-667 ought to have similar performance to DDR3-1066... so who would spend 5x times as much for DDR3 memory to get the same performance? Or 1.4x to get lower performance?

Once a price parity between DDR2 and DDR3 of at least one speed grade higher is reached, DDR3 will become a very interesting proposition.  Regardless, the question of DDR2 vs DDR3 isn't totally relevant to the X38, since the chipset supports both and buyers will choose the memory platform they want to go with when choosing X38 boards.

Okay, enough about the X38 chipset, let's now talk about the Gigabyte X38-DQ6 Quad, which happens to be a DDR2 X38 board and one aimed for the performance enthusiast and gamer!