3200 latency vs. 3700 latency

[lukeh182]

if you look at Corsair's PC3200 the latency is 2-3-3-6, but if you look at thePC3700 it's latency is 3-4-4-8. so which one is better? will the difference in the speed make up for the slower timings of the 3700?

 

[BillLeeLee]

I'd have to say the PC3200 is better with the latencies, but PC3700 is overspec (Intel and AMD only officially support PC3200 speeds), there's really no speed bonus from running higher rated RAM in a stock clocked machine.

If you run an AMD Athlon, the lower latencies are better; for Intels, latencies are less important.

However, if you overclock, the PC3700 might be better since it's rated for a higher speed.

 

[burningrave101]

Latency is most important on Intel and AMD systems both. Latency isnt racial against Intel systems. Latencys is the almost the entire reason the A64's are better then the Pentium 4's in gaming benchmarks. The A64's memory controller is on the chip itself and thus cuts way down on latency issues of the system memory. For all games and the majority of applications more then 3.2GB/s of bandwidth is not needed. Higher FSB speeds will yield higher performance yes but there are things called dividers that can keep the memory at the 200Mhz or a little higher mark while ramping the FSB as high as you would like to go. This will give the best performance especially in games. Pentium 4 systems even have dual channel which already doubles the bandwidth to 6.4GB/s so the need to increase it even further is pointless.

2-3-2-5 is definitely better then 3-4-4-8 for the current systems on the market.