Simply put, RDRAM was much more costly for memory houses to make, hence it offered a lower profit margin. It also was more complex technically to mass produce from a production standpoint.
Intel's detractors and competitors decried the need for the mysteriously expensive RDRAM, citing its high cost along with a possible lack of performance versus SDRAM-based solutions like PC-133MHz SDRAM and 266MHz DDR-SDRAM.
This "piling on" effect seemed to take the steam out of RDRAM's sails throughout 1998 and, with reports of RDRAM being incredibly hard to tool up for still present in early 1999, many wondered if we'd ever see the controversial technology reach the market.
This state of affairs was partially responsible for Intel pulling the plug on the i820's original expected launch period during the early summer of '99.
Intel was clearly sensitive to market conditions and SDRAM pricing at that time, as they weren't about to allow a desktop positioned platform debut on the market which required RDRAM that would have cost approximately ten times the price of PC-100 SDRAM to both OEMs like Dell and Gateway, as well as the customer.
Instead the i820 date was pushed back to late September, which allowed RDRAM manufacturers to ramp up to more appropriate volumes while lowering the launch cost for RDRAM RIMMs. It also gave Intel more time to enable their .18 micron mass production, which the i820 design required.
Unfortunately, the RDRAM controversy doesn't end today with this public release of initial i820 mainboard reviews.
Late last week Intel determined that they would be unable to solve a problem concerning the corruption of data across the system bus as the CPU communicates with the three RIMM slots in time for today's launch.
Although Intel realized that they had a possibly show-stopping bug on their hands, they likely believed that the issue would be solved internally by today's official i820 launch date.
Unfortunately this wasn't to be, and even though Sharky Extreme is able to provide today's in-depth review and analysis on Intel's i820 Vancouver mainboard and PC800 RDRAM, the official launch date for the i820 chipset has now been pushed back to a later date that has not yet been disclosed by Intel.
It's important to realize that the Intel VC820 Vancouver mainboard we're examining today is 100% indicative of the retail version of the mainboard's performance and featureset. It was literally 48 hours from hitting the retail channel in its current form when the RDRAM bug was deemed unbeatable in a timely manner.