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Need New Gaming RAM: Latency or Frequency?

bsan89

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Feb 4, 2008
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Well my Crucial Ballistix 4gb of ram has died.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146565

I've RMA and I decided going to use it on my brother computers.

So now I'm looking for new ram.
I never know whats benefit more for gaming when it comes down to ram.
Latency or Frequency.

A ram with 4-4-4-12 800 pc6400 timing or a ram with 5-5-5-15 1066 PC8500?

I just want the best but I'm NO overclocker when it comes to ram.
I was looking at these RAM here.

-Crucial Tracer
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148070
-OCZ Reaper
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227231
or the
-Corsair Dominator (What's the different between these two?)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145173

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145043

I' am buying their fan ether way.
 
As a note, I don't the the OCZ would clear the fan. The heatsink might be too big, because the Dominator leaves only a bit of space itself. But then again, that OCZ with a seperate fan put on it would cool well too.
 
the 1st link is a Crucial Tracer. 5-5-5-15 1066 pc8500
It got a nice LED feature too along with 2(1gb of ram)

Just wondering though. Should I look at the "1066 pc8500"
or look for timing, "4-4-4-12"

Which one more important?
 
Ok your running a Intel CPU based on FSB so it doesnt really matter. The higher frequency RAM may give a little better performance but what you need is size, 2x2gig or 4x2gig. The huge cache on intels current CPUs negates a lot of the performance of the RAM. AMDs design and Intels next design wont use the FSB so they will depend more on RAM speed, ie: DDR3. Four gigs of DDR2 800 should be fine for you and be a bit cheaper then 1066 but there may be a little better performance with the faster RAM. I'm talking like 1-2% but it may be more, you should check some of the articles on Toms and other sites that compare this issue.