Tighter stock timings = noticeable speed gain?

Turrican

Turrican

Turrican

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Hi there, have been searching around while planning my Asus P5E / Core 2 Duo E8400 system, and I've got stuck on the memory choice. One thing I can't find anywhere is an answer to this question -

Do tighter specified timings on ram actually translate into noticable speed gains in Windows and gaming?

For example, you can get the DDR-2 sticks of 6400/800mhz Ram at either 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12 timings. I'm just trying to understand if its worth the mark up and for this type of ram, especially when planning a future 8gb Ram upgrade path...

This is more of a stock speed question rather than an overclocking question, because if paying more won't get you more than 1 or 2 fps gains in a recent game like Crysis I'm struggling to see the point :confused:

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the newbish question!
 
Self update - sorry :o

I found an article here which has tested the difference:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/07/18/core_2_duo_memory_timings/1

Interestingly, it says that you gain some fps in games and application performance, but at the time (2006) the price difference was up to £100 to switch to tighter timing sticks.

However, nowadays it only seems to cost £10-20 more to get better timing versions, perhaps its worth it?
 
You'll only really notice a difference in programs that are very ram hungry. In my experience, the difference is unnoticable in pretty much any application, especially games.

It's more about sheer mhz than anything else these days.
 
Thanks for the reply.

So if system performance gains at stock speeds are not really noticeable between different timed sticks, are we saying that buying the tighter timings is only really worthwhile if one intends to overclock the CPU / Ram?
 
Turrican said:
In regards to what - stock system performance or overclocking potential?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

Both.

I can't remember the exact results I got but:

500 4-4-4-12 >5-10%> 500 5-5-5-15 >5%> 400 4-4-4-12


Get some Ballistix PC8500 2GB.

Got mine up to 515 4-4-4-12 @ 2.15V before the mobo or maybe them :confused: fell over :)
 
Hi there, have been searching around while planning my Asus P5E / Core 2 Duo E8400 system, and I've got stuck on the memory choice. One thing I can't find anywhere is an answer to this question -

Do tighter specified timings on ram actually translate into noticable speed gains in Windows and gaming?

For example, you can get the DDR-2 sticks of 6400/800mhz Ram at either 5-5-5-15 or 4-4-4-12 timings. I'm just trying to understand if its worth the mark up and for this type of ram, especially when planning a future 8gb Ram upgrade path...

This is more of a stock speed question rather than an overclocking question, because if paying more won't get you more than 1 or 2 fps gains in a recent game like Crysis I'm struggling to see the point
Click to expand...
If you talk relative to gaming performance then you won't "notice" any difference from memory rated at the stock FSB and timings up to the most expensive performance memory, literally a few frames is not uncommon.

Where you might/would notice the difference is if the faster memory lets you achieve a bigger overclock with the CPU but as the E8400 is already at 3 Ghz it is a moot point.
 
Higher clocked memory only really helps when overclocking, otherwise as long as the memory is a bandwidth match for the cpu's frontside bus going beyond that doesnt really help much.

But tighter timings will improve performance.

Thing is though, most games are GPU limited, so minor improvements gained by faster CPU, or faster memory/tighter timings is likely to be masked by the rest of the computer anyway.
 
Thanks a lot all, I think I'm gonna stick with the cheaper 5-5-5-15 sticks for a smoother ride, and better chance of 8gb later on.
 
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