hmmm latency or pure speed for gaming ram?

[bonzo020]

yea im a noob and im currently building my pc i was wondering which to look for in DDR2 ram latency or speed, motherboard only supports up to 800Mhz pls help with your opinion

[mr.jiggyfly]

Whatever is cheapest.

[EXreaction]

DDR2 800 is pretty much the standard speed for DDR2. Kinda like DDR 400 was standard for DDR back in the days...

Getting faster ram won't help(unless you are overclocking) but getting slower ram will be bad.

I would just get the cheapest(decent quality) DDR2 800 I could find.

[lhsonic]

DDR2 800 is pretty much the standard speed for DDR2. Kinda like DDR 400 was standard for DDR back in the days...

Getting faster ram won't help(unless you are overclocking) but getting slower ram will be bad.

I would just get the cheapest(decent quality) DDR2 800 I could find.

No it's not. I would say DDR2-667 is the standard. PC2-6400 DDR2 800 is still in fairly short supply. For a decent price however, I got 2x512MB of OCZ XTC Platinum EL DDR800 RAM for $157 Canadian for a computer I was building and works and performs like a charm.

I would say latency is secondary to speed. DDR-400 1-1-1-1 (does that even exist?!) pales in comparison to DDR2-800 or even 1000 @ 5-5-5-5...

[carl33p]

DDR2 hasnt been implemented long enough to say what the standard is. Let AM2 and C2D sink in for a couple months and i gaurentee that DDR2 800 will be the standard.
Many motherboards ATM suggest DDR2 800 opposed to DDR2 667....
DDR2-667 will be the pc2700 of DDR.

Corsair, crucial, OCZ are all good choices.

[lhsonic]

I never said it WON'T be the standard, I'm just saying it's not there yet.

HP computers and pre-built ones from big name stores always have crappy 2GB of DDR2-533 preinstalled...

The standard for people that actually buy their own stuff is probably DDR2-667 as of now becasue that's the most popularly advertised by computer stores (such as NCIX) and is the stuff always on sale. DDR2-800 will definitly be the standard for DDR2 in the future, just like DDR-400... unless DDR2-1000 gets really popular, affordable.

[RamonGTP]

No it's not. I would say DDR2-667 is the standard. PC2-6400 DDR2 800 is still in fairly short supply. For a decent price however, I got 2x512MB of OCZ XTC Platinum EL DDR800 RAM for $157 Canadian for a computer I was building and works and performs like a charm.

I would say latency is secondary to speed. DDR-400 1-1-1-1 (does that even exist?!) pales in comparison to DDR2-800 or even 1000 @ 5-5-5-5...

I agree. DDR2 800, even the not so low latency modules are still by in large considered high performance memory. Most pre-built systems ship with DDR2 667.

[Keymaker]

I have read in a magazine that CAS latency is by far the best to go by than its speed.

Meaning DDR333 running at CL2 is faster than DDR400 at CL3.

I took this into consideration when I upgraded and got the fastest speed with a CL2 DDR that is, PC3200.

I don't think my mother board supports DDR2.

Interesting reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR-2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_latency

Edit: I wonder if bandwidth makes much of a difference when a northbridge can only do so much? Or do I know nothing of a Northbridge?

[||Console||]

If you plan on Overclockind Get fast ram so it gives you more room to work with . If not just find a nice 2x1gig sticks and call it a day because the only place you will notice the difference is in benchmarks and if you are not overclockign there isnt much point in benchmarking.

lhsonic: I think the fastest ddr1 was the bh-5 and tccd that does 2-2-2-5 @ 200

And yes cl2 is a big jump vs cl3 I wish i could run @ cl2 at the speeds i run but that is asking to much . my pc4200 is stock 2.5-3-3-8 @263mhz but it can do better than that i run @ 275(everyday) and 280(benchmarks) @ 2.5-3-3-5 .

Keymaker: "I have read in a magazine that CAS latency is by far the best to go by than its speed.Meaning DDR333 running at CL2 is faster than DDR400 at CL3."

this isnt ture for every thing In some (few tests) this might work out but in most tests having your ram run @ the fastest it can will win out because it will have much higher ram bandwith . Ram BW is the reason I use the 10xmulti vs the 11x i get more BW out of my ram

[RamonGTP]

I have read in a magazine that CAS latency is by far the best to go by than its speed.

Meaning DDR333 running at CL2 is faster than DDR400 at CL3.

I took this into consideration when I upgraded and got the fastest speed with a CL2 DDR that is, PC3200.

I don't think my mother board supports DDR2.

Interesting reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR-2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_latency

Edit: I wonder if bandwidth makes much of a difference when a northbridge can only do so much? Or do I know nothing of a Northbridge?

That depends on many things such as the type of processor, the type of chipset, the kind of memory, how much more bandwidth are we talking? On the older Athlon XP's for example, that would be correct, they did not benifit much from anything past DDR333 and latency made a big difference. But then when you look at the P4 processors, it was the exact opposite. While they did benifit from low latency, they benifited from higher frequency memory (more bandwidth) a lot more than they did from lower latency memory.

[Keymaker]

So PC3200 @ CL3 in my P4 is better than PC2700 @ CL2 in my P4 ?

I'm thinking low latency is always a good thing though.

[HeadBand]

ddr2 standards are nothing like DDR standards...ddr needed the faster speed to run equivilent with the fsb that kept increasing

with ddr2 even 533mhz is enough to feed the core 2 duo so anything above that will not have a noticable increase, if you are overclocking by all means get the faster ram, but if not tests have shown that 533@cas3==667@cas4==800@cas5 so get whatever is cheapest

[Blitzkreig75]

I read a little article in MaximumPC where they pitted some DDR2 (Corsair Twin2X 2Gb kits) against each other. One was high frequency, the other low latency, and one 'control set'.

High frequency) 1,016MHz @ 5, 5, 5, 15 2T
Low latency) 764MHz @ 3, 4, 3, 9 2T
Control) 764MHz @ 5, 5, 5, 12 2T

The high frequency RAM beat the low latency set in 6/9 marks. Average margin of 'victory' was around 12-15%.

The two marks that the low latency RAM beat the high frequency stuff in were:
3DMark05 Overall:
HF) 11,162
LL) 11,217
CS) 11,185

Adobe PS CS2 MPC Script:
HF) 265
LL) 263
CS) 265

Quake 4 was only 1 frame per second faster with the HF set than the LL.

These marks lead one to a clear decision, IMO: Higher frequency.