LATENCY vs FREQUENCY

LATENCY vs FREQUENCY.

 

PARTICULARLY IN REGARDS TO USING ASUS SABERTOOTH x58.

 

I'm building a system that'll be intended for gaming here. The last time I built a system for myself, it was pre-DDR2 days. Back then, tight timings were important. You just bought RAM that had higher frequency than the board is rated for...and then easy the rated frequency of RAM to match the board's...and then tighten the latency.

 

So... I'm having an IMPOSSIBLE time getting anyone to answer this question now... I still see latencies anywhere from 6-9. I've been able to narrow it down to either <insert competitor name here> memory or Corsair memory... But quite frankly, the <insert competitor name here> has better timings at 6-8-6-20/1600. I haven't seen any Corsair memory lower than 8-8-8-24/1600 that is listed for compatibility with my Sabertooth x58.

 

So... The question is... HOW important is the whole latency vs frequency thing nowadays? HOW does low/high latency affect performance these days?

 

If latency is important, then am I going to be looking for DDR3 memory that is running at 2000 and then lowering it to 1866 (which is the board's rating) and tightening timing?

 

My frustration with this is growing. I'm having the same issue in any forum I've gone to so...it's nothing personal.

 

Also...I am concerned with compatibility. There seems to be a lot of attention to QVL lists. Much of the RAM I see isn't on there... But you figure that as long as the RAM's rated in speeds to match the board, it should work... But that's a lot of money to be betting on. So...

 

PLEASE ADVISE.

 

Also... What are the options/advantages we have with using higher-density modules? Can we also get some recommendations for use with a Sabertooth x58? (Seems to be a growing concern.)

 

These recommendations should be based on the very question I have posted here. WHICH RAM should I be using if it turns out that LATENCY is more imporant? Which RAM if FREQUENCY is more imporant? WHICH RAM can you tighten latency and still be compatible with this board?

 

This is just incredible that it's taking this much effort to get an answer. So far I get links thrown at me for RAM I've already looked at. RAM with timings of 8-8-8-24 or 9-9-9-24.

 

Please be informative in your responses. Lazy answers will go unappreciated.

 

Thanks, folks. Sorry if I sound cranky. I'm just fed up trying to figure out which RAM to move forward on here. Been at it for a couple weeks. (When I have time between my two jobs.)

Just for emphasis... I am aware that there are GUIDES and what-not out there. Even one HERE in the forum - which I have consulted.

 

But I'm looking for REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCES here. I want to hear opinions and examples that may help me make my decisions.

 

Thanks!

Wow... To add insult to injury... I didn't realize I was so far behind the times. *sighs*

 

From what I'm reading...games are taking close to 1.5GB of memory just to run now. I haven't PC gamed in 5 years! This is news to me...

 

I get that LESS DIMMS is better than more... Which means higher memory density is better.

 

So... a 12GB kit is starting to look pretty damn good right now.

 

Does this mean that running a 12GB triple-channel kit 4GBx3 is going to require more latency?

 

Sounds like the best I'm going to be able to find is definitely going to be in the 8-8-8-2x range here... Is my thinking correct?

Latency > Frequency

 

You can google it for a better idea, I think tomshardware did a test on it.

 

As for me, I changed my ram from 8-8-8-24 at 2000 to 6-7-6-24 at 1600 and I gained about 250 points on Performance Test. I would go with ********.

 

And yes this is the last time I'm buying Corsair product. Customer service stinks, I sent two emails with questions to them and none have been answered. They don't even have a phone number that you can call to talk to a real person.

I'll have to try that.

 

I sincerely appreciate your reply, man. I just hope that you don't get banned for being HONEST. I personally don't appreciate not being able to mention competitors to have a REAL discussion...

 

That's SHADY...and due to this, my opinion of Corsair is quickly called into question. If a company is willing to stand behind it's product, it should have the CONFIDENCE to see the name of it's competitors mentioned in their forums...and LAUGH. Not make rules against it and potentially ban people for it.

 

Literally, Corsair... That's just shady enough that I almost want to avoid your product. That's anti-consumer activity and it's just SHADY.

 

I'll continue to review Corsair products until I'm sure that they may/may not benefit me. But be aware... I'm looking at other products. Particularly from the company that our brave friend here mentioned. (Thanks, MNguyen.)

 

The second I find that he has been disciplined for giving an honest, consumer-to-consumer opinion... The second I find that my thread has been removed because of this...

 

That's the second you lose my business. End of story.

 

Let's continue this discussion, please.

 

Thank you for that info, though. I will be researching those possible product lines, MNguyen! :)

 

Let's just hope that Corsair acts with confidence here and gives some good counter-recommendations.

They don't even have a phone number that you can call to talk to a real person.

SOOO untrue.

I've called Corsair and left a message for RamGuy on his vmail and he called me back less than 5 minutes later.

please dont make unfounded accusations, it makes it difficult to respect anything you say.

T: +1 510-657-8747

F: +1 510-657-8748

Toll Free: +1 888-222-4346

if you live OUTSIDE of the United States there are free or super cheap (like a penny a minute) programs to make phone calls through your computer: Skype, Google Voice, EarthCaller etc...

SOOO untrue.

I've called Corsair and left a message for RamGuy on his vmail and he called me back less than 5 minutes later.

please dont make unfounded accusations, it makes it difficult to respect anything you say.

T: +1 510-657-8747

F: +1 510-657-8748

Toll Free: +1 888-222-4346

if you live OUTSIDE of the United States there are free or super cheap (like a penny a minute) programs to make phone calls through your computer: Skype, Google Voice, EarthCaller etc...

 

I am not interested in your corrections of his statement. He has had his own experiences and you have had yours. Otherwise I don't care.

 

I AM HERE FOR INFO.

cyrlythewolf, I understand that you are seeking clarification to an ages old question. However, I need you to observe the forum rules just like everyone else, regardless if you like the answers that are posted.

 

Synthohol posted accurate information and did not violate any forum rules. So, your name calling is unwarranted AND against the forum rules.

 

As for your question, here is the best rule of thumb I have used over the past 8 years of OCing. NEVER sacrifice CPU speed to gain memory speed.

 

What I mean by that is to decide by your purchase or by your testing the absolute fastest speed you can run your CPU. Then, buy memory that compliments that. If you need to buy DDR2000, then that is fine. On X58, frequency trumps latency, and especially when you can get more CPU speed. If you can OC your chosen CPU to its max speed using a lower speed grade of RAM, then that is fine too. A CPU at 4GHz for example using DDR1600, might be 3-5% slower in certain memory sensitive tasks than the same CPU at 4GHz with the memory at DDR2000.

 

It all boils down to how much you want to OC, what your CPU is capable of, and what speed grade of memory you are willing or able to buy. Of course, CPU cooling is critical but that is another subject.

Note: You don't have to edit your posts and place <insert competitor name here>. That's why the filter's in place, so you don't have to do anything extra.

 

I sincerely appreciate your reply, man. I just hope that you don't get banned for being HONEST. I personally don't appreciate not being able to mention competitors to have a REAL discussion...

 

That's SHADY...and due to this, my opinion of Corsair is quickly called into question. If a company is willing to stand behind it's product, it should have the CONFIDENCE to see the name of it's competitors mentioned in their forums...and LAUGH. Not make rules against it and potentially ban people for it.

 

Literally, Corsair... That's just shady enough that I almost want to avoid your product. That's anti-consumer activity and it's just SHADY.

This site is to support and promote Corsair products, not their competitors. If I went to Sears and started telling everyone that there's a similar product at Macy's and not at Sears, I think it's well within their rights to kick me out.

 

That's one reason why the filter's in place. It's ok to say "******** has a X MB kit at Y timings. What does Corsair have that's similar?" Perfectly logical question to ask. You'll get a fair answer, and if you choose to get the non-Corsair kit because it meets your needs, no problem whatsoever. You got the facts and chose with your wallet. ******** is happy because you bought their product, and Corsair's happy because you looked at their products and gave them a fair chance. I would suggest to go to a vendor neutral forum to discuss X versus Y in an unbiased environment because let's face it, it's safe to say that any recommendation here would be for a Corsair product. :biggrin:

 

 

I'll continue to review Corsair products until I'm sure that they may/may not benefit me. But be aware... I'm looking at other products.

As I stated above, no one will ever have a problem with any consumer shopping around. Competition drives the market.

 

 

The second I find that he has been disciplined for giving an honest, consumer-to-consumer opinion... The second I find that my thread has been removed because of this...

 

That's the second you lose my business. End of story.

Disciplinary actions affecting other members are the staff's concern and not yours. If it's determined that a rule infraction warrants a temporary / permanent ban from the forum, it won't affect anyone's support options since the forum is primarily a supplemental form of support. Phone, fax, email, and ticket systems are always available. Threads are never deleted here (save for total spam threads or adult material or the like).

 

 

I am not interested in your corrections of his statement. He has had his own experiences and you have had yours. Otherwise I don't care.

 

I AM HERE FOR INFO. So unless you have some kind of input that is relevant to MY question...GET LOST.

He's within his right to respond, as MNguyen brought up what he perceived to be a fault with the support process, and synthohol posted the information he (and possibly you or others) may be looking for. To clarify this a bit further, on the main Corsair site there is a link at the top that says Contact. That page contains various ways to contact Corsair, including their phone numbers.

I do alot of gaming and I have built many systems for my self as do I Overclock my rig with the exception of my last build.

I had the same questions as you, read a lot of forums and came up with the bright idea of just buying high end and hoping for the best so far its been a lot of work and a lot more reading but I think I'm getting there.

I am rather disappointed that the Corsair Dominator GT 2000mhz is not on the QVL for the crosshair extreme or for hexcore CPUs. I've always been a Corsair fanboy and I have always believed in lower Latencies being better. but this time I went down the middle. higher frequency and kinda sort low Latency. as for amount unless your running a VM you really don't need more then 6 GIG at the most .

so what I'm trying to say is make sure the ram you buy is on the QVL and and stick with the lower Latency ram.

 

This is just what I am experiencing and learning ATM

Good suggestions, however keep in mind that QVLs test only a limited amount of memory, and rarely (if ever) get updated.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but AMD systems generally always like lower latencies and Intel systems (as YB pointed out with his experiences on X58 based systems) generally prefer higher speeds. What I'm getting at is that your reccomendation of lower latency, based upon your AMD system, may not be the best thing for his X58 based system.

yes sir you are correct . I am just trying to learn as much as I can and I am as frustrated as this fellow is and thought I would offer up some of my experience.

 

It is painful to build a kick *** system only to be laughed at because it fails so frequently .

The bleeding edge hurts :)

The bleeding edge hurts :)

hey ! I learned something new this evening ;)

 

no really actually I did learn a bit this evening from this thread so thanks .

Glad to hear. There's a whole bunch of great information floating around the forum, and if you've searched, but haven't found an answer to your questions, don't hesitate to start up a new thread and ask!

NOW we're getting somewhere.

 

And...OK. So this forum is meant as a supplemental form of support. In that, I am mistaken and I apologize. The context was apparently lost on me.

 

That said...

 

I'm NOT intending to overclock, really. Although I wouldn't be opposed to trying it some time just to see what can be accomplished.

 

One thing I'm also wondering, though... I notice that I don't see 1866 CMP-series RAM from Corsair. Are they basically just relying on their high-end RAM to do that job by clocking down? Seems like with the Corsair line-up, you either go HIGH or go minimum.

 

I was not aware that there was any major difference as to what AMD or Intel prefers... (Latency or Speed, respectively.)

 

So... If we're just going for ultimate response time and fair speed...with priority on stability... Which RAM products would be flexible?

 

That's still a broad-based question, I realize. So...let me expound on that here...

 

I realize that QVL's are pretty pointless after a while. A lot of products DON'T get tested and updated onto the lists... SO...

 

Would the higher-end RAM work OK on the board without issues? Would the 2000 RAM work OK on the Sabertooth x58 if I were to buy it and run it at 1866? It's not listed on the QVL's as far as I can tell.

 

Ultimately it's starting to sound like that'd be my best option. 12GB (4GB x 3) of DDR3 2000 clocked down to 1866.

 

Does this sound about right?

So... If we're just going for ultimate response time and fair speed...with priority on stability... Which RAM products would be flexible?

 

Would the higher-end RAM work OK on the board without issues? Would the 2000 RAM work OK on the Sabertooth x58 if I were to buy it and run it at 1866? It's not listed on the QVL's as far as I can tell.

 

Ultimately it's starting to sound like that'd be my best option. 12GB (4GB x 3) of DDR3 2000 clocked down to 1866.

 

Does this sound about right?

 

Your conclusions are very close and you are distilling a lot of information pretty well.

 

As far as flexible, the higher speed grade you buy, the best chance you have at flexible. A 1600C8 kit "MIGHT" run 1866C9. But there is no guarantee. However, an 1866C9 kit will almost certainly run 1600C8 as that is a lower bin aka lower grade of RAM.

 

In your example above, the 2000 will certainly run 1866 even though it's never actually tested at 1866. The only question then becomes the latencies at which you can run at 2000 vs 1866.

Man... It's starting to look like the only practical option here is to run CMX12GX3M3A2000C9 and clock it down to 1866.

 

That's gonna cost me. >_<

 

I am by no means a noob when it comes to building systems... But I haven't ventured into overclocking. I've never saw the point to it. (Still not overly interested in it.) But my brain now wonders...

 

What kind of latency/timings could I expect out of that then? I can see the stock timing...

 

LET ME MAKE A SUMMARY HERE...

 

Board: ASUS Sabertooth x58

CPU: Intel Core i7 950 LGA1366

 

I would like SPECIFIC recommendations to satisfy these prerequisites:

 

1.) The RAM must be able to run at 1866. (As per the Sabertooth x58's specs.)

 

2.) The RAM must be able to run at average (good) latencies. Tightest possible for 1866.

 

3.) The RAM must be able to do so without causing compatibility issues. (I've read of several people having this issue.)

 

4.) The RAM does not have to be listed on any QVL's. (Although it'd be nice if they could get those updated.)

 

5.) I would like the RAM to be compatible with the Airflow Pro RAM monitoring attachment. (What can I say? I like accessories like that.) Although if I must, I will sacrifice this.

 

6.) I'm leaning toward 12GB (4GB x 3) at this point after having seen information showing that games are starting to take upward of 2GB of memory space while running! (Although if you guys can specifically recommend that a 6GB (2GB x 3) kit will work well enough and leave room for overhead then I will be open to that, too.)

 

And finally... 7.)

 

The only question then becomes the latencies at which you can run at 2000 vs 1866.

 

THIS is the issue that has me stumped the most. This is what is causing me to worry the most. I do not understand how we go about arriving at this figure. I just want to find what will work the best with the board and CPU...and give me the ability to perform at the board's capacity while maintaining a more efficient memory configuration. Not necessarily FAST...though this is part of the objective. But definitely EFFICIENT and STABLE.

 

I just don't want ISSUES. I think that this is my biggest fear. I'm putting out what - at this time - is A LOT of money. I'm just trying to ensure that I get what it is that I need the FIRST TIME AROUND. Y'know?

 

If you give suggestions, please give any specifics along with your suggestion. At this point I'm willing to compromise where I need to. But it seems to me that the frequency is more important than the latency. I just want a good balance of performance in the enthusiast level while maxing out my board's capabilities. (Again... Not trying to overclock here. Just want to ensure that I'm running at advertised specs of my board.)

 

I STILL don't know how the CPU figures in to all of this, though... Where does it fit into the equation? How does the frequency of the RAM relate to the speed of the memory controller on the CPU?

 

These are the elements I'm missing...

CMT12GX3M3A2000C9

 

Even though your motherboard may support 1866, doesn't mean you'll be able to OC your CPU (and therefore your memory controller which is within Core iX CPUs) enough to allow the memory controller to run memory at those speeds.

. (Again... Not trying to overclock here. Just want to ensure that I'm running at advertised specs of my board.)

Then just run your memory at 1066. You must OC to run DDR2000.

btw, that CPU is only 229.00 from http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346210

the motherboard is the same price http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0347337

you can save 60 bucks?

just trying to help.

WOW! This thread has shed some serious light on the subject. Thanks to everyone here. I am getting the Gigabyte 890FX-UD5 mobo and couldn't figure out what type of ram to get. So between mushkin and corsair, I decided on corsair for dimm slot spacing issues. Any who, I have the AMD Phenom II x6 1100T oc @ 3.8. My current ram is 8GB of Corsair dominator DDR2 1066.

I do video editing, web designing, photography, a little gaming, music and graphic design. At least I would like 16GB of DDR3 1333MHz. The model of ram I'm looking at is Corsair CMP16GX3M4A1600C9. It's "able to get up to 1600MHz @ 9-9-9-24 OC, not that I will be heart broken if I don't get that due to the limitations of AMD cpu's, but I should in theory be able to get 1333MHz with tighter timings possibly. At any rate, just wanted to drop in and say thanks to all of you for shedding some light on this topic.