RAM: 1333 vs 1600, CL8 vs CL9 vs CL11

[beil]

Hello.

How much difference will make 1333 vs 1600 RAM in gaming PC?

How much difference will make CL8 vs CL9 vs CL11 RAM in gaming PC?

Thanks.

 

[vinhn]

You won't notice it unless you benchmark it. But the price difference for 1333 and 1600 isn't much, just go with 1600 CL9.

 

[Ectorr]

CL:

To know the difference, you have to know what CL means. The CAS latency is the time between accessing memory and being able to read the memory from the output, so 8 is faster than 9 is faster than 10. BUT and this is a huge BUT. Notice the all caps. Sometimes a higher CAS is faster because the memory operates at different speeds. For instance a DDR3 1333 module runs at 666mhz and ha a cycle time of 1.5ns. With a CL of 6 that means it takes 9ns for the memory to be available on the output. However a DDR3 1600 module runs at 800 and has a cycle time 1.25ns. With a CL of 7 it takes 8.75ns. As you can see, even though the CL is higher, it is still faster because the mhz jump increases the cycle time enough to give it a little boost. Going further, DDR3 2000 is just as fast at CL9 as the 1333 is at CL6.

1333vs1600:

You're not going to notice anything different. the only time you would notice, is if you are running one of AMD's new APU processors. It was shown that faster memory did speed up the gaming experience for the integrated GPU.
Better to go for 1600mhz cl9.

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

Basically, the higher the mhz the better but the lower the timing is the better.

Between 1333 and 1600, their is almost no difference.

The bigger difference would be a 1333 with cl11 would be slower while 1600 cl8 would be the fastest.

But your talking about a few milliseconds.
Gaming pc or not.

The last think too look at would be the price: 2 gb 1333 cl 9 @ 50 $ would be better than 1600 cl8 @ 100 $ (not much difference between them.

BTW I upgraded 4 gb 1066 cl 8 to 8 gb 1600 cl8 and changed windows experience by .4 (7.4 to 7.9) No difference in boot / gaming ect.
I guess the only difference would be in encoding huge files. You could get a few minutes less there.