Which of these RAM sticks should I buy?

[GermyBoy]

What does the 2-3-3 and 2-2-2 mean? I need to buy a 512MB chip of DDR SDRAM and am not familiar with all of this "crazy talk" so I need some help please.

I was looking at this "BASIC" chip, but they have this "better" one for $15 more, and I can't tell the difference. Of course the snazziest would be this one right here.

I'd like to order this in a few hours, and can't figure which ones I should get. Anyone have any ideas? This is pretty good for memory prices from what I've seen. I'm just kicking myself for not buying 2GB DDR for $200 back 6 months ago, but I have the money now, so I take what I can get.

Thanks for the help!

Peace,
GermyBoy

 

[NutBucket]

The numbers you reference are the CAS latency or timing number. I don't know about DDR ram specifically, but I know that for stadard SD ram, going from CAS 3 to CAS 2 nets about a 15% performance increase. That said, there's a decent chance that a stick sold as CAS 3 will run at CAS 2.5 or 2. Hope that helps.

 

[GermyBoy]

So I guess that means that I can get the $135 (middle one) which is Cas2 then and get equal performance (for a non-overclocked system) as the most expensive stuff, right?

 

[NutBucket]

That's what it looks like. You can always get some Thermaltake heat spreaders if you want that look.