Ram - latency vs mhz

[A7X]

Mods, i've had a search for a similar thread but could not find anything, however if i have missed one feel free to lock the thread!

Right, as some of you may know i recently built my own pc and brought 2gb's of 1066mhz OCZ sli ram, with a latency of 5-5-5-15. However having had it running for a couple of months i'm now getting annoyed as it is only showing timings of 5-5-5-18, although it is running at 1066mhz. The next annoying thing is that it is the only thing keeping me from scoring a windows experience index rating of 6, as for some reason windows puts it at 5.6.

Now i'm thinking of upgrading to 4gb's very soon and am wondering wether to go for slightly slower 800mhz ram but with lower latency or stick with this stuff. Only problem is i had 4gb of this stuff in a couple of weeks after i had the machine but kept getting blue screens when playing Test Drive Unlimited and weird performance in bioshock (game would freeze etc). I returned the Ram and decided to wait for a hotfix from microsoft to be released (i knew the ram was not faulty as i had tested it, and the board sockets were fine as with 2gb in either set of sockets functioned perfectly).

The hotfix has (apparently) now been released, hence the time for the upgrade.

I have looked on overclockers and around, but there all a bit too technical for me, and as everyone was so helpful before i thought i'd ask you!

So which is better (for gaming) and if someone could give me a little more detail on latency (i understand it's to do with how fast the memory can be accessed) i would be very greatful.

Cheers! 👍

 

[ontologicalshoc]

From tomshardware.com:

Speed Vs. Latency: Myths And Facts
There's a myth that every new memory format brings with it a latency penalty. The myth is perpetuated by the method upon which latency labels are based: Clock cycles.

Consider the latency ratings of the three most recent memory formats: Upper-midrange DDR-333 was rated at CAS 2; similar-market DDR2-667 was rated at CAS 4 and today's middle DDR3-1333 is often rated at CAS 8. Most people would be shocked to learn that these vastly different rated timings result in the same actual response time, which is specifically 12 nanoseconds.

Because cycle time is the inverse of clock speed (1/2 of DDR data rates), the DDR-333 reference clock cycled every six nanoseconds, DDR2-667 every three nanoseconds and DDR3-1333 every 1.5 nanoseconds. Latency is measured in clock cycles, and two 6ns cycles occur in the same time as four 3ns cycles or eight 1.5ns cycles. If you still have your doubts, do the math!

The problem perceived by many less-informed buyers is that faster memory responds more slowly, but it's obvious from these examples that this simply isn't often the case. The real problem isn't that response times are getting slower, but instead that they've failed to get quicker! When we see astronomical "speeds," we hope that our entire systems will become "more responsive" as a result. Yet, memory latencies are one place where things really haven't changed much.

 

[opendriver]

Mods, i've had a search for a similar thread but could not find anything, however if i have missed one feel free to lock the thread!

Right, as some of you may know i recently built my own pc and brought 2gb's of 1066mhz OCZ sli ram, with a latency of 5-5-5-15. However having had it running for a couple of months i'm now getting annoyed as it is only showing timings of 5-5-5-18, although it is running at 1066mhz. The next annoying thing is that it is the only thing keeping me from scoring a windows experience index rating of 6, as for some reason windows puts it at 5.6.

I think it only goes to 5.9, so thats damn good for ram, but im not sure how windows rates it ram. I have pc5300 (667Mhz) in my laptop and I have a score of 5.4 for memory.

Thats a little weird.

 

[A7X]

Sorry - yes it only goes to 5.9, still i've heard a lot of people with far cheaper ram reaching 5.9. I know WEI is not the be all and end all of ratings and it may be incorrect , but if so why? Just seems a waste of money buying the expensive stuff if the cheaper stuff does just as good a job? Seems like quite a decent laptop you've got there opendriver 👍

ontologicalshoc - That's an interesting article, so does that mean that my 1066 with slightly higher latency is equal to if not better than 800mhz with lower latency? it's all confusing

 

[ontologicalshoc]

ontologicalshoc - That's an interesting article, so does that mean that my 1066 with slightly higher latency is equal to if not better than 800mhz with lower latency? it's all confusing

Basically, yes. The point of buying faster memory is to allow overclocking headroom. If you're not overclocking, you won't see a difference just by dropping in faster-rated memory chips. If you're not overclocking, however, and you've bought faster memory than your system requires, you may be able to manually turn down those timings to reduce latency. If you can do that stably you'll likely see a performance increase.

 

[standard235]

Latency for synthetic benchmarks.
Frequency for real world performance.

Translation:
Latency for willy waving.
Frequency for functionality.