Cas Latency question

[Vigilante]

Hi,
In my pc I have one stick of Kingston hyperX pc3500 rated at cl2, and one stick of hyper X pc4000 rated at CL3. Would it be safe to run each stick at CL2.5? I'm not worried about the 2, I'm just curious if lowering the CL of ram lower than it's rated for can damage it.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Killing2Live]

Faster and better stick of Hyper X yet lower Cas Latency? Sounds wierds but HyperX is high performance so Im saying go for it but I dont know nothing so don't take my advice as serious.

 

[Shamrock]

Lowering somethings speeds will never hurt it.

 

[bryanf445]

Faster and better stick of Hyper X yet lower Cas Latency? Sounds wierds but HyperX is high performance so Im saying go for it but I dont know nothing so don't take my advice as serious.

yea but as ram gets faster then timings are looser, so thats why its 3. but you should be able to run it at 2.5

 

[WhiteZero]

Even the difference between 3 and 2.0 isnt enough to really notice. The only time you'd want to worry about low CAS Latency is in a server.

So I'd just go with the cheeper for a gaming rig.

 

[Vigilante]

Okay, so since the pc4000 is runnig at 3500 it should be safe to turn down the CL?

 

[WhiteZero]

Yeah, if you have PC4000 (DDR 500) you can go with the higher CL (3 or 2.5).

 

[oldagerocker]

What do the numbers mean? i think mines, 3,3,8,3?... is taht good? pc3200 btw. Should they be lower/higher? what?

 

[baron insig]

it aint bad, those timings are fine unles suw ere one of the crazy buggers on www.pctats.com forums but then they are benchmarking / overclocking gurus

very interesting if u want info sign up n pm one of them they will probs help

 

[oni_666]

My ram is rated at CAS 2.0, and therefore 2, 3, 3, 6 , But runs quite happily at 2, 2, 2 ,5.
To answer the poster of this topic, your PC4000 is rated at CAS 3.0, at that speed, so you should be fine running it at a lower CAS setting, But should you overclock your memories FSB beyond 250 (500) then you may find that the ram fails at that speed because it needs to be run at CAS 3.0.

 

[WhiteZero]

What do the numbers mean? i think mines, 3,3,8,3?... is taht good? pc3200 btw. Should they be lower/higher? what?

CAS Latency is just the ammount of clock cycles it takes to refreash data on your RAM chip. Thusly the lower the number, the better
3.3.8.3 is on the higher end of Latencies.

However, the difference between 3 and 2 clock cycles is so minute (8 nanoseconds) that most all users shouldent even worry about it.

Having CAS 2 over CAS 3 is best if you intend on overclocking your RAM, since it runs at a higher Mhz

 

[Muhahahaha]

It will not hurt your RAM if you run it too low, it just may cause your system to become unstable and reset. If it's having problems, just loosen the timings again.