DDR2 won't get any cheaper, and has in fact become pretty expensive. Just checked at Alternate.de (where I normally buy my hardware) and the cheapest 4GiB ECC DDR2 Kit did cost almost 100€, and 8GiB kits varied from 157€ to over 300€. So if you still want to upgrade your RAM, better don't wait too long or the RAM will become even more expensive.

I doubt they'll bother, specially with DLC being made and a possible PS4 version on the works.

I mean, they didn't bother to fix the problems Far Cry 4 and WatchDogs had with AMD cards (I don't even know if FC 4 finally supports CrossFire or still doesn't), and both are far bigger games than Anno.

Btw, I watched a gameplay video from Anno 2070 and, besides the different setting, it's quite similar to Anno 1404. I would even say that it can be a little easier than 1404. It can be an alternative if you don't want to bother with 2205 because it still looks good and doesn't have UPlay.

@shakarak: I really thought Nvidia had fixed the problem that caused Kepler to perform poorly in The Witcher 3. I'm surprised they haven't.

This is why I wouldn't get a 970 despite its great price/performance. Thanks to its silly 3.5+0.5 memory setup, it relies on special drivers to perform at its maximum, and given how Nvidia has treated Kepler, I'm not sure for how long they will keep doing those special optimizations.

@Basil: If you're talking about DDR3 then the limit is 32GB kits (4x8 modules), at least that's the higher I've seen.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are Sales that don't happen here... or at least didn't happen. Last year there was an online PC parts site that did something similar, so I'll keep an eye on them. But to be honest, I only need a better graphics card and unless I find a really great GPU sale, I think I'll wait until Artic Islands and Pascal are launched.

300?! For that you can buy a new motherboard, CPU and 8GB DDR3.

Well, there are bigger kits - if you can provide the money: https://www.alternate.de/Transcend/DIMM-128-GB-DDR3-1600-Quad-Kit-Arbeitsspeicher/html/product/1223223?tk=7&lk=8265

I'd also wait. The next gen GCN will be a bigger overhawl than the previous incremental updates, so there will surely be more substantial performance boosts than in the previous itinerations. And I'd wait for Pascal since Maxwell seems to perform poorly right now on DX 12, limiting it's potential long-term performance

I agree, 300€ just for some old RAM really isn't worth it. Even 100€ is pretty much borderline, but it's the best one can get anymore.

@Alby: If there are any Computer flea markets in your region, I'd check those out, as it will surely become much cheaper to buy used RAM than new old ones

Yes, alas, my only hope is finding some shops that do bargains to get rid of old stocks or some used kits on eBay or else, but in the end the most likely thing is that I'll stay with just 4GB until my next major upgrade. If AMD started supporting DDR4 earlier, there wouldn't be any problem, DDR4 itself would have probably become widespread,  with low-end offers too, earlier, maybe just after next Xmas, but due to how things actually went, middle-low end configs with DDR4 will become viable some months later, probably during next Summer slump. And I'll definitely bite the bullet and wait, I won't repeat the same mistake, not for the performances, but for the longer term support.

That memory kit is insame. I find it hard to believe that there's a market for it, besides business ofc.

My biggest problems with current cards are the size and the power consumption which equals to heat. My current case can't house cards longer than 10" or 25 cm, and it's a silent case so it doesn't like hot components (thought I have extra fans to deal with it). Of course I could get a new case, but with a limited budget, the money spend on a new case will mean less money for the card . 

So the new gen of cards at 16nm and HBM will solve my two problems at the same time: they'll be shorter and a mid range card won't use more than 175-200W while providing me with a huuuge performance upgrade.

Both designs have allegedly been tapped out (which means prototypes have been made and work), and products launch between 6-10 months after that.

AMD and Nvidia will have new cards next year, there's no question about that.

I'm not sure if Mid-range Graphics cards will be using HBM since it's more expensive than GDDR5 and the high Bandwith would come to waste on them right now. I guess HBM will be limited to High-end and Enthousiast markets for the next 2 generations, only then will we see HBM in more mid-range cards

Will the chips be produced in 16 or 14 nm? Globalfoundries 14nm LPP (Low Power Plus) just reached production-ready yields. While the process is not ideal for x86 CPUs (exept low power models like Intel's Atom or AMDs Puma), it might be ideal for graphics chips

We'll see how the HBM thing goes, but that will mainly depend on how both Nvidia and AMD name and market their cards.

If Nvidia goes with a Titan-lika card from the get go, then it would be something like New Titan > 1080 > 1070 > 1060 ... Althought it will depend on the price, for me the 1070 would be mid-range and I expect it to use HBM just like 1080 (we know that at launch the x70 class chips are the ones that don't reach the quality of the x80 ones, so they will both have the same memory).

For AMD it will depend if they go with another round of Fury cards, which would mean Fury > 490X > 490 > 480X ... Using the same logic, the 490 would also have HBM. But I'm the first to point that with AMD it's a little bit harder to guess because they can price the 490/X too high and make the 480X as their mid-range card, which I don't think will have HBM.

I don't know where will AMD produce its chips, to be honest. The GloFo press release mentions:

“FinFET technology is expected to play a critical foundational role across multiple AMD product lines, starting in 2016,” said Mark Papermaster, senior vice president and chief technology officer at AMD. “GLOBALFOUNDRIES has worked tirelessly to reach this key milestone on its 14LPP process. We look forward to GLOBALFOUNDRIES' continued progress towards full production readiness and expect to leverage the advanced 14LPP  process technology across a broad set of our CPU, APU, and GPU products.”

Btw, I read a while ago that both th 14 and 16nm processes are the same, it's just that one measures the high and the others the wide of the transistor.