The debate is over bandwidth vs. latency and DRAM chip interfaces. Only one thing is clear - Intel is pushing Rambus, and almost everyone else is looking for alternatives. I can only answer that with another question. As these new memory types become available, users must make their own choices. In order to avoid making expensive and disappointing mistakes, it is important to understand the real performance balance between DRAM, CPUs and buses.
Size is first, speed second.
If your memory configuration is too small, memory page swapping to the hard disk will severely limit performance. Beyond that, the system level performance impact of faster DRAM depends on your system architecture and on what kind of applications you run. Predictably, some of the new DRAM types improve latency, while others crank up the burst rate. That is the heart of the matter. As a rule of thumb for today s desktop PC, faster latency will almost always deliver a performance benefit.