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This is a curious question, most RAM seems to have a Mhz rating. For example 2000MHz. RAM also has a timings rating for example 8-8-8.

What I would like to know is roughly (not exactly) how fast is average DDR3 RAM in MB/s.

The reason I want to know this is because I've been following the progress being made in the SSD PCI-e drive department, for example http://www.tomshardware.com/news/PhotoFast-SSD-PCI-e,7719.html, where this new card will push speeds of in excess of 1000MB/s - essentially around 1GB/s.

So is RAM still much quicker than this?

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found the answer - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM – JL. Feb 21 '10 at 23:43
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you should post it as an answer below. answering your own questions is encouraged. (you can't accept your own answer immediately, but you can after a couple of days.) – quack quixote Feb 21 '10 at 23:53
I think it's likely that RAM will stay faster than SSD at least for the next few years. – Nick Josevski Feb 22 '10 at 0:39
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At time of answering this question even the quickest SSD drive, is around 7 times slower than the average DDR2 module.

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You can test it: http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

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This program tests for errors, doesn't tell you how fast in MB/s the ram is. – JL. Feb 21 '10 at 23:41
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@JL: some memory test programs will report the actual speeds during the test. eg memtest86+: gratilog.net/xoops/modules/mydownloads/images/shots/memtest.gif ... this is more akin to benchmarking, so it will give you exact numbers, as opposed to theoretical speeds for a given RAM frequency. – quack quixote Feb 21 '10 at 23:57
@JL - apparently the $14 "Pro" version will perform benchmarks, but I thought that this was just a Windows port of Memtest86+. My bad. – amphetamachine Feb 22 '10 at 3:32
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Memtest86/Memtest86+ is essentially its own OS that you boot into -- you need to do that to test all the memory. once booted into Windows or Linux or some other OS, you can't test the memory that the OS kernel has loaded itself into. – quack quixote Feb 22 '10 at 3:48
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DDR2 800 is about 2600 MB/s (OCZ on Asus board.)

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