Overclocking latency vs FSB

[melloyellowaz]

I tried doing a search on the forums but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. I'm planning to get an Opteron 165 with a8n32-sli but a lil confused about what memory to buy. Would I see better performance with high FSB and low latency or the other way around? Mostly be used for gaming. I guess as an additional question, under which applications would each situation (high FSB/lower latency or low FSB/tighter timings) be better for? Thanks for all your help.

 

[velis]

I may be wrong, but I'd go for frequency vs timings any time. The speed difference gained from timings is negligible while being able to clock it high will allow you to extract more bandwidth from your modules linearly increasing performance until you have to lower the multiplier.
Of course AFAIK all the modules you can get with high freq are also low latency ones. Granted, the spec says the timings are not perfect, but when used as DDR 400 those modules can have timings set very low. You only need to loosen them when the clock starts raising.

 

[letdown427]

This is a much debated topic.

Go for the high frequency modules to allow maximum OC headroom. Opteron has on-board memory controller aswell, so timings aren't as important as they used to be.

Consider CPU speed your main goal

 

[firewolfsm]

Lowering the latencies never gave a real performance gain, but taking the memory from DDR480 to DDR540 did. The G.Skill 1GB sticks are very good, mine can hit DDR566 with stock timings WHILE UNDERVOLTED to 2.5V

also, at DDR500+ speeds, I'm running a system with equal or better bandwidth than DRR2 800 on AM2.

 

[CP5670]

I think timings generally have a slightly larger effect in games (from this thread), but it doesn't make much of a difference either way.