Cas Latency 4 or 5? Major differnece?

[Atty]

I'm currently putting together a Conroe PC (E6600, Asus p5w Deluxe) but I'm having a little trouble with the RAM.

Is it worth paying 50 - 75 dollars more for the Cas Latency 4 DDR2 800 ram? Will I see a big perfoamnce increase over Cas latency 5?


I hope this is in the right section. Thanks for any help!

 

[Talcite]

nope. Unless you plan on OCing. In that case, you should look for some ram other people have gotten good OCs on, not just the CAS rating. Although, generally speaking... lower cas latency means better OC capability.

 

[abracadaver]

Not worth it. Go to madshrimps.be, they just did a DDR2 Conroe timing compairison.

 

[savvy]

You can't tell a difference, I believe. Unless you're skilled.

 

[skriefal]

I've seen many recommendations for lower-CAS RAM, but have yet to understand why -- unless it's one of those age-old "mine's bigger (or smaller, in this case) than yours" duels. DDR2-800 CAS 4 and CAS 5 sticks are both rated to operate at 400FSB, so at that speed there really shouldn't be much reason to prefer the more expensive CAS 4 sticks. You might get a 2-3% performance boost in memory intensive apps, but not enough to justify the added cost. Perhaps the more expensive sticks might be better if you want to wring out every last MHz of performance beyond a 400FSB bus... but I'm not certain that anyone has conclusively demonstrated even this to be true.

 

[Talcite]

Cas timings make a big difference in AMD systems because of the integrated memory controller. They also just give you that little extra edge in superPI or stuff like that =P

 

[Atty]

Thanks for all the help guys!

 

[ssvegeta1010]

Originally posted by: Talcite
They also just give you that little extra edge in superPI or stuff like that =P

But how often do you run SuperPI with all your everyday apps? (Although I guess that may mean a bit of a difference in DC apps and the like)

Anyway, try to get memory that you know will overclock, not just memory that has lower timings.

 

[Talcite]

Originally posted by: ssvegeta1010

Originally posted by: Talcite
They also just give you that little extra edge in superPI or stuff like that =P

But how often do you run SuperPI with all your everyday apps? (Although I guess that may mean a bit of a difference in DC apps and the like)

every wakeing minute =P