Memory: Higher speed w/o low lat. vs lower speed low lat.

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ftran999

When I had first decided to build my pc, I had no or very little desire to
overclock and was looking to buy Crucial ram. However, after browsing
around I have suddenly caught the OC bug. Several reviews have indicated
that while Crucial makes good quality and stable ram, it does not overclock
well. I have now become interested in Corsair XMS memory to be used on my
P4c800-e dlx board.
The question I have is, is there any difference between a chip with a lower
speed of say ddr400 with low latency versus a chip with a higher speed such
as ddr433, 500 etc but with no LL, considering all things being equal such
as capacity, non-ecc, etc.
Just for the sake of comparison these are the latest prices I've found at
Zipzoomfly.com:

Twinx1024-3200llpt $308
Twinx1024-3700/pt $310
Twinx1024-4000pt $310

They have the DDR550 and higher, but is more than I am willing to spend.
Which of the above choices is the best "bang for the buck" for my MB.
I will be using a p4 3.0 Northwood if that makes any difference.
Thanks in advance for your help.
 
"ftran999" said:
When I had first decided to build my pc, I had no or very little desire to
overclock and was looking to buy Crucial ram. However, after browsing
around I have suddenly caught the OC bug. Several reviews have indicated
that while Crucial makes good quality and stable ram, it does not overclock
well. I have now become interested in Corsair XMS memory to be used on my
P4c800-e dlx board.
The question I have is, is there any difference between a chip with a lower
speed of say ddr400 with low latency versus a chip with a higher speed such
as ddr433, 500 etc but with no LL, considering all things being equal such
as capacity, non-ecc, etc.
Just for the sake of comparison these are the latest prices I've found at
Zipzoomfly.com:

Twinx1024-3200llpt $308
Twinx1024-3700/pt $310
Twinx1024-4000pt $310

They have the DDR550 and higher, but is more than I am willing to spend.
Which of the above choices is the best "bang for the buck" for my MB.
I will be using a p4 3.0 Northwood if that makes any difference.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Click to expand...

If you visit cpudatabase.com , you can see how much Vcore is needed
to attain a higher overclock. A 3.0C/800 can go to 3.75GHz at 1.70V
for Vcore and good air cooling. For that 25% overclock, you can replace
your DDR400 ram with DDR500 ram.

If you plan on using one or two sticks of ram in the dual channel
P4C800 or P4P800, then DDR500 is still possible. If you want lots
of ram, then four sticks at DDR440 or so might be a reasonable
expectation.

To me, purchasing PC4000 memory means you are going to leave the
memory overclocked all the time (a "dedicated" overclocker). If
you buy PC3200 LL memory, the latency improvement won't quite
compensate for the bandwidth difference (at least if all your
computing has the same needs as a Sandra memory benchmark). But the
PC3200 memory can be run 1:1 (no overclock) or 5:4 (25% overclock),
so you can still tinker, without being permanently committed to
overclocking.

With the PC4000 memory, you can tighten the timings when reducing
the clock rate to DDR400, but it is hard to say whether you can
hit the same low latency settings of a ram selected for that
purpose.

If you really want to spend money, buy some Winbond BH-5 memory
from Ebay or a more reputable selling forum. That will give you
2-2-2 performance at PC3200. Mushkin BH-6 (basically PC2700 memory)
is still available for a limited time, and is binned for PC3200
at 2-2-2 and 2.8V or so. That is as close to BH-5 performance as
you can get at the current time, brand new.

Tomshardware had an article a while back, comparing how much of
a difference memory options made to performance, and perhaps
you can judge the utility of expensive memory from those results.

YMMV,
Paul
 
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