Is low latency Ram worth it?

B

Biff Hardbody

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
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I'm about to choose Ram for my new pc, an athon 64 3800 with ASUS motherboard. Right now its between Some crucial PC-3200 ram (1 gig costs $160) or some corsair XMS (1 gig costs $300).

The crucial is just "regular" ram, but is it all that inferior to the XMS? Will the XMS make such a dramatic improvement in gaming that it warrants the nearly double price? Thank you.
 
Do you have an AMD or intel setup? AMD likes tigher timings where as the Intel setups can get by on pure bandwidth and not miss a step...though tighter timings are always better
 
I'm not familiar with the ram but what are the timings on both pairs of ram. Unless one is 2-2-2-5 and the other is 3-4-4-8 you wont see that much improvement. While you will see some I would say for double the price you could find something in between like some mushkin 2-2-2 and be happy as well
 
You gain percentage points worth of performance, but it's not going to be overly dramatic - in fact, you might not notice it at all anyways.

The low latency high performance RAM is usually for the most demanding user, who also tend to overclock.

I had 1 GB of Mushkin Level II, but seeing as how the RAM was incredibly pricey, I sold it and got the Crucial 1 GB of PC3200, making back some change in the process. Also, performance is the same as before, I really don't notice a change in going from 2-2-2-6 to 3-3-3-8 timings.

My advice: unless you are inclined to spend over $100 more, get the Crucial. It's rock solid RAM. Crucial also has Ballistix RAM now (with low timings) if you care, too.
 
Thanks guys. Thank you, BillLeeLee for going in depth.

1 last question. Would 2 gigs of the crucial do any good? Or is 1 gig enough?
 
For gaming, I'd say 1 GB is what you want to go with that system. Two GB is not really necessary at this point in time unless you're doing heavy video editing. Sure, Doom 3 might tout 2 GB as a recommended spec, but that's only one game. Can always add more later anyways.
 
Yea, I myself am pretty keen on that Ballistix stuff. Tech folks really ought to hire marketing firms to name their products :rolleyes: But the spec is 2-2-2-6 at £170 for a gig of the stuff. Corsair's crazy-super-extra-juicy XL modules are a singular clock cycle faster, yet retail for £230 at the cheapest. So that's £60 for one clock cycle.
 
vlad said:
Yea, I myself am pretty keen on that Ballistix stuff. Tech folks really ought to hire marketing firms to name their products :rolleyes: But the spec is 2-2-2-6 at £170 for a gig of the stuff. Corsair's crazy-super-extra-juicy XL modules are a singular clock cycle faster, yet retail for £230 at the cheapest. So that's £60 for one clock cycle.
Click to expand...

And for an AMD system, you'll want to be running either at 2-2-2-11 anyway for best performance.
 
When I went from 512megs to 1gig, the module I bought was Kingston Valueram, meaning that I went from 2,2,2,6 to 3,4,4,11.

Any difference I noticed was in benchmarks. Couple of hundred 3dmark01's and maybe 10fps in Q3 (meaning 300 to 290). In a real-life scenario it'd mean going from 30fps to 29fps in Far Cry...

Save the 150$ for a vid card upgrade, which will give you more than 1 extra frame per second.
 
The really high speed stuff is really meant for OCing. The trick with low latency ram really is that you can usually increase the latency from say 2-2-2-5 to 3-3-3-8 or something, add a little voltage, and get it to run well over rated speed. It's really most useful on chips w/ a locked multiplier & a chipset that doesn't like running mem async, such as nforce2 for example.
 
yah, i'd like to see crucial ballistix do 2-2-2 at 240mhz (corsair XL usually can).

If you aren't overclocking, don't worry about it, but that low latency equates to running at the same latency at much higher frequencies.

Sure the XL compared to a 3-4-4 chip at 200mhz isn't much of a difference, but when they are both 3-4-4, and the XL is at 275+ mhz, it'll make a huge difference.
 
Low latency RAM is not really needed ... but so is a 3800+, some people just like the best that they can afford, and some nice low latency RAM is nice to have, because you'll know you have quality and will give you a little bit more room when you're tweaking your system ...
 
Parja said:
And for an AMD system, you'll want to be running either at 2-2-2-11 anyway for best performance.
Click to expand...
11? whatchutalkinabout?

And a somewhat related question.. what sort of maximum memory frequencies do you guys expect A64 mobos to be able to handle? I don't know if this is dependent on the integrated memory controller, or the particular chipset. I'm just thinking of future upgrades, if its necessary to get faster memory, would my mobo be able to handle it.
 
vlad said:
11? whatchutalkinabout?
Click to expand...

If you're running an nForce2, that will be the fastest between about 200 and 225 MHz FSB. Test it and find out for yourself.
 
nForce3 is my likeliest avenue :) But good chunk of trivia to know still, thanks mate.
 
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