PC makers spurn Intel bus technology

Intel Corp. has suffered a setback this week at the Computex Trade Show in Taiwan, as major motherboard manufacturers said they may delay adoption of Rambus DRAM due to high prices and disappointing performance.

Intel plans to start using the RDRAM in its 820 chip set. Intel chip sets based on RDRAM technology boost memory bus speed from 100MHz to at least 400MHz.

But RDRAM is too expensive compared with the synchronous DRAM in use now, the motherboard makers claimed. At least one vendor said there was not enough performance difference between systems using the 400MHz RDRAM memory bus and those using the PC100 bus to justify the cost. As a result, the vendor suggested RDRAM would not be viable until late next year.

Many vendors at the show said they already have working systems built with the 820 chip set. In fact, some vendors boasted they had systems based on the 840 chip set already running in their labs.

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