DDR Memory timing explanation????

[Cyph3r]

I've been rearching motherboard/cpu/memory combinations to replace my current aging Athlon XP 1600+ machine and have come across some stuff with memory that I don't understand.

I was specifically looking at the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, a Gigabyte and MSI board as well and their recommended memory providers. I came across Kingston's page and they have a set of memory sticks compatible with the mobo of my choice. Well I was going through the options, I would probably get two 512MB sticks to get 1 GB total memory. But I saw that one stick was 3-3-3 timing and the other was 3-4-4 timing. What does that mean, how does it affect me?

I've seen a lot of performance analysis and these numbers thrown out a lot. Could anyone explain these numbers in some simple terms, or point me to some document/web page that details what they are and what I should look for.

Regards

 

[Corsairpro]

Theoretical: The lower the timings, the faster the RAM responds to read/write requests... therefore its "faster"

Realworld: If you're running dualchannel PC3200 or better, timing differences will only be noticed in benchmarks, not in real use.

 

[Cyph3r]

Ahh ok..that explains it. Thanks

 

[dunkster]

http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20030701/memory_tuning-08.html#memory_timings

The best part of the above article is the memory timing diagram, clearly illustrating the timing relationships of Trcd, Tcl(CAS), Tras and Trp.

Hope this helps!