Pow42

Looking @ the sticks of RAM being sold on newegg.com, I notice that the price varies a lot, even when the sticks have the same amount of memory. Now I know that not all RAM is made the same, and it isn't all about the memory size.

For the purpose of comparison, I'm looking at a 4GB (2 x 2GB) "multi purpose" package that is being sold @ $144.00, and a 2GB (2 x 1GB) "gaming RAM" package being sold @ $149.00.

Note: the 2GB package does come with a fan. I am aware of that, but just how useful/mandatory is it?

Now looking @ specs found on RAM in general, I am able to see:

Slot type: I'm guessing this is about hardware compliance, and about the potential speed.

Speed/Clock: Again, I'm guessing that faster is better. I'm wondering what is considered slow by today's standards, and what is considered fast? Is there a point where 2GB of fast ram could out-perform 4GB of slower ram?

Timing: I see all these numbers thrown at me like "5-5-5-18", and I have no clue what that means.

Other terms: There's other terms that are tossed around that apparently aren't typically standard (and of course come at a premium ). I see things like

-"XMS2" (that just mean matching pairs?),
-"Dual-Path Heat Exchange" (good for overclocking?)
-"SLI Ready" (Does it actually take specific RAM in order to SLI/XFire 2+ GPUs?)

Sorry if any of these questions seem particularly obvious, and thanks for any input. It is greatly appreciated.

Fox

It's really in the timings. You'll notice that the gaming ram has really low timings - 3-4-3-9. This is really good for overclocking, as are the oversized heatsinks.

I have the Corsair XMS2 2x1gb set. They're running in dual channel, and the timings are 4-4-4-12, which is relatively decent in comparison with some of the cheaper sticks. I got them for 25 dollars after rebate.

Look up "CAS latency" or "ram timings" on google, and you'll get a better idea of what these mean in practice.

As far as I know, the buzzwords you listed are brand specific. I don't believe that a brand has to be explicitly 'sli ready' aside from being a decent enough spec, in order to work with SLI video cards.

Protoss_Archon

What ive read before is that when it comes to ram timing, the lower the timing the better the ram performs. But don't just go into the bios and lower the ram timing settings, hopefully the ram supports it.

Pow42

I looked up what the timings mean an all, but the numbers don't mean too too much to me. I know that smaller = faster = overclockable, but for gaming, is 2GB of ram at a lower timing really gonna be better than 4GB at a higher timing (like 5-5-5-12 or something)?

Fox

I think so- I doubt that one game would have more than 2gb of ram usage at any given time.