Aha! But This!!

RAMBUS has to be good. I mean, it's in every high bandwidth memory application outside of the PC. Look at all these game consoles.
I also read about Intel ditching rambus... apparently, it's a deal where some executive mentioned it... I would call it far from official. How else are the gonna do the Brookdale and Northwood B chips?
I doubt they would switch now.
I think that DDR is actually MORE expensive than RAMBUS now, 'cause to get up to 3.2 GB/S, like in Video Cards, you need to handpick chips, whereas RAMBUS can be much faster right off the bat...
On top of that, RAMBUS inc. plans to go to a 32 bit bus...
That could mean over 10 GB/S of bandwidth in just a few years!
That is, if they don't go chapter 11...
To summarize, RAMBUS WAS expensive. Now it's cheaper than equvalent DDR. (i'm talking OCZ 3000 vs. standard rambus)

I don't think it is about cost of the RAM iself anymore. It is about:

1) The politics of the company. Sue a lot of DRAM manufacturers for violating patents Rambus made of open standards that and then expect the manufacturers to be on your side? stupid is all I have to say about that.

2) The execs at Intel must feel that part of the reason for their blunders of the last two years that they are only now recovering from are due to their exclusive contract with Rambus for high-end systems. P4 demand has undoubtedly grown since it can be offered with at a range of system prices now. Plus, the i850 boards with dual-channel RDRAM are more expensive than many of the SDR/DDR P4 boards, so even if RAM price is equal, system price is still higher.

3) They need dual-channel RDRAM to get 3.2 GB/s as it is anyway, so why not go with dual-DDR and get 5.4 MB/s? That would allow a 166MHz FSB on the P4, and that would be killer. Plus, DDR is based on open standards and thus their is more competition from the manufacturers. With RADRAM, Rambus dictated everything about the modules.

Looks like RDRAM is going the way of ISA slots.I read an article that the Brookdale and Northwood chips sets would be replaced by Placer and Granite Bay DDR chipsets. I'll see if I can find the article.