Ram Latency ?

yeah so ..
i'm tired of running on 1gb ram, my motherboard can take 8gb and i sold my ipod .. so i got some ca-ching .


planning to buy another 2-4gb of ram, the only question i have is about the latency .

.... what does it do ?

is 5-5-5-12 better than 4-4-4-12 ?
how about 4-4-4-15 ? or 5-5-5-15 ?

these have me confused, sometimes lower is better / higher is better for computers, for this idk what the latency is ... is it a response time ?

idk, normally i'm more than computer savvy but i do not dwell in ram ...

 

All your answers can be found in "The Holy Grail of RAM":

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=320351

basically it is all about communication but have a read and satisfy yourself.

 

The lower the timings/latencies, the faster the ram. However, it doesn't make a difference for the average user. For overclockers like me, I go after the lowest timings I can afford.

DDR has the lowest C2/3. DDR2 has C4/5. DDR3 has C5+. It's not just the timings that determine the overall speed, but also the clock frequency. i.e. 800Mhz.

4-4-4-12 PC2-6400 (800mhz) is faster than 3-3-3-8@400Mhz. You won't see the difference unless you run tests like Super Pi Mod which overclockers use for bragging rights. "Hey, I can do 1MB in 10 secs." Mine takes about 14 secs with everything loaded.

 

Well said, you buy the newer RAM it will have "looser" timings (high No.'s) but perform better. Unless your a gamer you wont notice diddly squat! But a gamer will (finite detail).