timings are how many cycles it takes to perform certain memory functions. I forget exactly what they stand for, but they have names like CAS, RAS, etc. The tighter the timings, the better. On an intel platform, timings do not matter too much, since the memory controller is slower, like 400MHz, and there is a lot of latency already in the system. On the A64 platform, the memory controller is integrated, running at full CPU speed, i.e. 2GHz or faster, and so the latency is much lower in the system. As a result, latencies make a big difference on an athlon. Anyways, they matter, and you want the best timings you can afford, but there is no reason to shell out an extra $100 for fast timings, since the 5-8% you'll gain from low latency memory is insignificant compared to the boost you'd get from spending another $100 on a faster GPU or CPU. The main use of low-latency memory is that they pretty much use the best chips available (samsung TCCD or micron) and they can overclock very well, and retain decent latencies at high frequencies. For example, Crucial Ballistix (my personal favorite) can retain 2-2-2-5 timings all the way to DDR440, and if you loosen timings to 3-3-3-8, you can likely hit well past DDR550, and some even hit close to DDR600 (i haven't been able to verify this, yet)
But anyways, DDR2 is not that big of a deal currently. Chips are more expensive, latencies are higher, and they aren't really faster yet because DDR is hitting speeds close to DDR600. And on the A64 platform, I can tell you from experience, larger memory bandwidth doesn't do much for performance.
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