[jedbrown]

1. 4 of those R3 instances cost less than the X1 but offer nearly double the bandwidth. The X1 is cheaper per GB, but much more expensive per GB/s.

2. If DRAM was not faster than NVRAM/SSD, nobody would use it. "Speed" involves both bandwidth and latency. Latency is probably similar or higher for the X1 instances, but I haven't seen numbers. We can make better estimates about realizable bandwidth based on the system stats.