What is CL on rams?

[ViruZ_HUN]

Hello!

 

 

What is CL on rams? like CL9, CL11?

 

I heard lower is better why?

 

why is CL9 better then CL11?

 

What is CL?

[brownninja97]

The lower the better i believe

[Capitalist Jesus]

You ask a lot of questions don't you?

[FloRolf]

its the latency. obviously lower is better.

[ViruZ_HUN]

You ask a lot of questions don't you?

VSignatureV

 

and yes i ask alot questions about all detailed stuff on hardware! I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING!

[ericlee30]

Latency, the lower your timings the better the memory. For an example if there were two memory moduals at 2133 and one has timings of 10-10-10-34 and the other has 11-10-11-31, The ones that are at 10-10-10-38 is the faster of the two memory

[flibberdipper]

its the latency. obviously lower is better.

Agreed. And usually as you get faster RAM (i.e. 1333MHz vs 2133MHz) the CL goes up (i.e. 9 vs 11). So sometimes speed isn't everything. That's why I like my DDR 400MHz RAM (CL 3).

[Capitalist Jesus]

VSignatureV

 

and yes i ask alot questions about all detailed stuff on hardware! I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING!

Wikipedia. The one place where you just keep clicking on blue, and next thing you know it's 2014.

[ViruZ_HUN]

Latency, the lower your timings the better the memory. For an example if there were two memory moduals at 2133 and one has timings of 10-10-10-38 and the other has 11-10-11-34, The ones that are at 10-10-10-38 is the faster of the two memory

is there "much" difference between a 2133 CL11 kit and a 1866 CL9 kit? which is faster=?

[ericlee30]

is there "much" difference between a 2133 CL11 kit and a 1866 CL9 kit? which is faster=?

The 1866 kit will perform equal to the 2133 because of the 2133 high timings. if that makes since

[ViruZ_HUN]

The 1866 hit will perform equal to the 2133 because of the 2133 high timings. if that makes since

hmm pretty confused now...

[FloRolf]

is there "much" difference between a 2133 CL11 kit and a 1866 CL9 kit? which is faster=?

 

2133 CL11 would be faster i guess, but for gaming, nobody cares... 

[Bluuz]

Like all of life's questions, the answer is Linus:

[ericlee30]

hmm pretty confused now...

In just about every real world sanerio, timings are more important then speed and after 1866 in real world performance there really is no performance boost, the only time you will see memory like 2133, 2400, 2600,2666 and 2800 memory out preform 1866 and lower, is with benchmarking.

[SMURG]

Speed vs latency depends on the application. For gaming, it really doesn't matter very much unless you're using onboard graphics on something like an AMD APU, and in that scenario speed will have a bigger impact than latency.

Effectively the CL or CAS latency tells you how long the gap is between the CPU saying "access this" and the RAM actually performing the process. For asynchronous DRAM, it's telling you how many nanoseconds it takes, whereas for synchronous DRAM it's telling you how many clock cycles it takes - so high latency memory can result in clock cycles being effectively wasted if the CPU is still waiting for the RAM to perform a particular task. Hence, for computational tasks lower latency is sometimes preferred.

[mgsstar]

Great explanation by Crucial imo: 

 

 

What is CAS latency and how do I determine what I have?

CAS latency (also referred to as latency) is the amount of time it takes for your memory to respond to a command. Specifically, it is the length of time between memory receiving a command to read data, and the first piece of data being sent from the memory. 

Unless you are a computer enthusiast looking to push every last bit of performance out of your system, CAS latency needn't be a deciding factor when purchasing memory modules. 

You may see CAS latency (clock latency) referred to as CAS#, CL#, CAS=# or CL=#. The performance difference between CAS latency ratings is virtually undetectable. 

http://www.crucial.com/kb/answer.aspx?qid=3657

Personally the performance difference between CAS 9 and 11 to me isn't much as I don't experience any bottlenecking on my 7950 with CAS 11 1600mhz ram.

[pummetje]

just get a good 1600mhz kit you wont see any diffrence when gaming

[TheProfosist]

Unless a program you use is really ram heavy as doing lots in the ram youll benefit from a lower cas more than a higher frequency. So I suggest for most cases just get the highest speed your cpu and chipset can do stock and get the lowest cas you can for a reasonable amount of money. Highest supported stock speed range from 1333 to 2133 depending on what you have.