PCFormat Forum Archive

I'm still using my Transcend AXeRam 2000mhz chips, 4x 2gb sticks. They work and they work well. The problem now is that they work too well. I've reached a point where I want to replace my 8gb with 16gb, 4x4gb chips, and I cannot find a suitable replacement.

Let's look at my chips. they are running 1866mhz, 9-9-9-24, with a 1.6V setting. Very nice, very stable, and low latency. Now my problem is that try as I might I cannot find any chips that can match that setting, and even when I find a 2133mhz chip the latency is starts off with a nice 10 but for the rest it gets killed by being 10-11-11-31 or 10-12-12-31. I'm gaining speed but at the same time loosing that speed with the added latency ending up that the ram is about 10% slower with response times.

1/1866*1000 = 0.54ns 9-9-9-24 = 14.47ns
1/2133*1000 = 0.47ns 10-12-12-31 = 15.94ns

why must it be so hard to find fast and low latency ram?

Why "must" you have the fastest ram you can get?

More is always better if the speed difference isn't huge. Huge being say DDR vs DDR2

But as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.

My money won't part because I can't find the proper replacement. Sadly as mentioned I cannot even find something on par unless I start looking into the R5k regions and even then its something entirely different.

Still, you do not need the fastest ram you can get. As I said, more ram makes a bigger difference than a fraction of a second's worth of latency or a couple of Mhz.

StarBound wrote:1/1866*1000 = 0.54ns 9-9-9-24 = 14.47ns
1/2133*1000 = 0.47ns 10-12-12-31 = 15.94ns

And where do you get this from?

That formula is to get the amount of nano seconds it takes the ram to refresh or send data. 1 second divided by the mhz per cycle. The 9-9-9-24 is the CAS latency and other latencies. Normally the last number in the range should be equal to the previous 3 but on some ram you get better complete times than the actual wait time for each cycle.

I took the latency time times each of the latency factors ( CL/RAS/tPR) and took the biggest number from them.

Ok, and according to your calculations, one of the modules has a 1.47ns latency deficit.

Can you notice 1.47ns passing by? Are you perhaps Flash Gordon? What about memory subsystem latencies on the controller side? What if I told you the cake isn't real?

Bro, you are worrying about things you shouldn't worry about.

And your formula is wrong btw.

T = (1 / Mhz) * CAS

Mhz here refers to the actual clock, which is half of the advertised Mhz. ie. 1866 = 933

I get 9.65ns for the 1866 and 9.38 for the 2133

What can I say? I tend to overthink things. But I did see an article where they compared ram speed and ram latency. That a 1866mhz gives a 10% frame rate increase in a game vs that 1600mhz ram (was 40fps vs 44fps) but the 2133mhz actually gave a deminished return of 43fps.

To me its all about the numbers even if I might not notice them off the bat.

Hman wrote:Are you perhaps Flash Gordon?

I think you mean the Flash. Flash Gordon wasn't that fast.

Just saying.

Stuart wrote:

Hman wrote:Are you perhaps Flash Gordon?

I think you mean the Flash. Flash Gordon wasn't that fast.

Just saying.

Lol. "Flash! Ahah!"

Are you still sukkeling StarBound? Why do you want RAM with tight timings? Using your PC for general purposes, gaming and overclocking? ePeen? Or just that deep satisfaction that you have good RAM with toit timings? (Not mocking you, I know that feeling!

Will going from 8GB of RAM with tight timings to 16GB of RAM-that-you-can-afford with ok-ish timings really mess you over?

You should know by now I am full of crap

I've looked at the gskill sniper ram that is 9-10-9-28 1866mhz 1.5V that is just south of R2000 for 16gb. Man ram prices went bazongas after the exchange drop. But its more about I can't find the ram I am currently using so cannot spend R1k on going to 16gb from the 8 that I have.

@Star I saw this article and thought of this thread immediately .

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memo ... on-haswell

Have fun fussing over your tCL timings now .

And you just made me think of this article Anak:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/hardware/ ... frica.html

Edit:
Oh, wait, scratch that:
http://www.zdnet.com/sk-hynix-china-pla ... 000020281/

Well for now I'm not gonna bother with anything. Haswell-E and DDR4 is on next years list.