If you are a DIY PC enthusiast, chances are your current PC has undergone a whole series of upgrades, we all do it, improve a little here, add a little there, a few months later the PC under our desk is almost a completely different machine to the one we originally built.

If this situation describes your habits, then you are also probably painfully aware that major technology changes, will often place a stumbling block in our upgrade path. The most current of these is the DDR3 debate.

Let's look at my current PC, I'm running 4GB of DD2 667, on a DDR2 only mainboard. It's a great mainboard, an Abit Fatal1ty F-190HD, which is a uATX board which I run in a shoebox case, it's been a great board and I have no real wish to change it. Because of this I have sidelined the DD3 upgrade for some time, but I am also aware that I am going to need to change the whole mainboard eventually. This has stopped me making any other upgrades, I would really like a new Geforce 9xxx video card, but I don't want to switch to one of these without taking the mainboard into consideration. So I am faced with a major upgrade hurdle, I need to trash half my system, just because memory technology has changed.

I have spent some time recently trying to convince myself I want to make this series of upgrades, so I started investigating the improvement of DDR3 over DD2. I found two major benefits, and only one of these really effects me in any way.

Benefit number 1, is the speed issue, Current DDR2 technology has reached it's theoretical maximum performance, which was 1066Mhz, although this can be increased a little through overclocking. Now we are in a chicken and egg situation, to use faster RAM I need a faster mainboard, but unless I want faster RAM, I don't need a faster mainboard. So do i really want faster RAM? Yes I do, I don't need it, but I want it. By switching to a DDR3 mainboard, I can increase my memory speed considerably.

Benefit number 2, is the power issue, DDR3 has far lower power consumption than it's DDR2 equivalent, for me this means nothing, but it is an interesting benefit for those of you investigating new laptops, DDR3 laptops will have an extended battery life over a DDR2 model.

But I cannot help thinking this is a pure vanity upgrade, my current RAM is plenty fast enough for everything I do with my PC, I am a casual gamer, I run standard desktop applications, and very few of the things I use my PC for tax it in any way.

So should we upgrade from DD2 to DDR3? My thoughts on this are simple. If it's time you changed your mainboard anyway, then yes go for it. If you are content with your current system mainboard, then hold off on the upgrade until it's time for a major system refresh.

To sum up, DDR3 is faster than DDR2, and consumes less power, but unless you really need more speed or lower power consumption, then the overall cost of the upgrade is just not worth it.