Time for new RAM - PC3200 2gb

Steve09 · 12 Jan 2007 at 11:51

Is there much different in terms of performance from RAM for £115 compared to RAM which is £180?

I am looking at...

OCZ 2GB DDR400 CL2.0 DUAL CHANNEL PLATINUM

£184 timings of 2-3-2-5

or

OCZ 2GB DDR400 CL2.0 DUAL CHANNEL PLATINUM XTC EDITION

£178 (slightly cheaper) with same timings of 2-3-2-5

or finally

Kingston 2GB Kit 400mhz DDR PC3200 CL3.0

£116 (mega cheaper) and with timings of 3-3-3-8

At the minute I have crappy RAM with timings of 3-3-3-8 and to be honest, it aint bad, but because there is only 1gb of it, I am a laggy at the start of maps on BF2 and my PC is really laggy when exiting BF2.

So what I'm asking...

Will I benefit performance wise (due to the timings of 2-3-2-5 compared to 3-3-3-8) in spending another £70-£75 over the Kingston stuff, or will the Kingston do me fine for a fraction of the price of the OCZ stuff?

Cheers for your time, Steve.

semi-pro waster · 12 Jan 2007 at 12:06

I don't know huge amounts about Ram but unless you are overclocking the tighter timings won't help much, certainly not as much as the fact that you have an extra 1gb to play with.

steve258 · 12 Jan 2007 at 15:21

Low timings have the greatest performance benefits on AMD based machine; Intel rigs don't benefit from low timings as much.

£116 for 2Gb kit is dirt cheap!! I'd definately go for the Kingston. Beside you are already using 3-3-3-8 modules so there won't be any performance lost.

Theguy · 12 Jan 2007 at 16:41

Can i just ask a question, i have pc3200, Corsair CMX512 XLPro (the stuff with the LEDs) which has timings at 2.2.2.5. if i update to 2gb of ram, and went with that 118quid stuff, would i be able to feel the latency problems? or would the 2gb counter that?

semi-pro waster · 12 Jan 2007 at 16:50

Like I said I'm far from an expert on Ram but I'd be pretty sure that having the extra Ram is more of a benefit than the timings are.

Minstadave · 12 Jan 2007 at 16:55

Theguy said:
Can i just ask a question, i have pc3200, Corsair CMX512 XLPro (the stuff with the LEDs) which has timings at 2.2.2.5. if i update to 2gb of ram, and went with that 118quid stuff, would i be able to feel the latency problems? or would the 2gb counter that?

Having 2GB will bring you more benefit in newish games than the tight timings. Most games won't show the difference in latencies as performance is mostly determined by GPU power. Even the cheapo Kingston will probably run 2.5-3-3-6 so I'd definately go for it at that price.

steve258 · 12 Jan 2007 at 17:01

Minstadave said:
Having 2GB will bring you more benefit in newish games than the tight timings. Most games won't show the difference in latencies as performance is mostly determined by GPU power. Even the cheapo Kingston will probably run 2.5-3-3-6 so I'd definately go for it at that price.

I went from an OCZ EL Plat. Rev. 2 1Gb 2-2-2-5 1T kit to my current 2.5-3-3-6 2T and the performance lost is only noticeable in benchmark scores, doesn't really affect real life performance.