This page aims to show the statistics obtained from the CPU-Z online database. As a reminder, CPU-Z is a popular freeware that gathers PC systems hardware information : CPU, memory, chipset ... After the scan, the users can generate a submission file and create a new record in the database, that is named a validation. Those anonymous validations can be then used as an overclocking proof, or even as a description of a PC farm for companies.

Created in 2005, the CPU-Z database contains around 300,000 entries today and gets 3,000 new entries per week, most provided by persons who do not overclock or tweak their system. As a result, the database is a relevant representation of the general PC market. We found it then relevant to process the database in order to generate a set of statistics. The statistics are presented as two tables :

• a "snapshot" view, updated every day and based on the data gathered during the three last months ;
• the evolution on the 12 last months, updated and commented every month ;

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• Memory Brand Market Share

First of all, one word concerning the 43% with the label "other". In this part, 30% are memory sticks with no specific brand (also called "noname"), and the 70% left consist in very small memory stick manufacturers. The database contains more than 300 different memory brands. We concentrated on major brands, in term of production volume as well as popularity. Amongst those brands, Kingston is the leader (but tends to decrease a little bit however) with almost 15% of the records. This is a logical result considering that Kington is the "first independant memory device manufacturer", according to its website. 2nd position is for Corsair, known for its high end products, but also for the "Value" products line that mixes a good quality and low prices. Amongst the brand that are progressing, we find OCZ (from less than 6% to 8% of records in one year) and Crucial (subsidiary of Micron) who proposes very good products for a very competitive price.

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• Memory Type

The transition from DDR to DDR2 occured in february 2007. Since that time, the move was fast : DDR2 is above 70% whereas DDR is going below 25%. The DDR3 is still too pricy to occupy a signifiant market share, and is stuck to around 1%. The expected  DDR3 price drop and the release of chipsets that exclusively use that type of memory should result in a major increase in 2008. Finally, SDRAM is definitely out of the race.

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Memory Size

Warning : these results reflect the total amount of memory in the system and NOT the individual memory module size. As we can see, 2007 was the transition from 1GB to 2GB, that last capacity being used on 50% of the recorded machines. The other interesting information is that the 4GB+ capacities are also growing (there are as many machines equipped with 4GB than machines with 512MB at the end of december). Only 4% use 256MB or less.