What is RAM Speed and Timing? How Does it Affect My PC?
While we talk about computers, speed is all that matters! Most of the users believe that having a faster processor with the speed boosted in megahertz to gigahertz is better. So it’s obvious that having a huge amount of RAM is important too. Your RAM has a rating you might not know of matters is SPEED.
What is RAM Speed? Why does it matter?
The speed of your RAM delivers the transfer rate in your system. The faster your ram speed the faster will be the transfer rate of data and stored in local space. The trick of speed here is based on the DDR type you use. Unlike processor, it doesn’t rely on clock speed, but a combination of hardware components. At the end of the day, speed is all that matters. Faster is always better.
It gets complicated in the terms of vocabulary. The speed rating is usually measured in in “DDR” terms, but we still have old PC2/PC3/PC4 labels still around. Usually, this numbers are portraying the same standard. “DDR3 1600 RAM” can also be called “PC3 12800” and “DDR4 2400” can be “PC4 19200”.
Technically it’s all based on the method of bits and byte- 1 byte means 8 bits. So, if the RAM is DDR 1600, means it has a million bytes per the second rate. While PC3 12800 also has the same rate. 12800 divided by 8 is 1600. So it’s just another way of typing the same thing. It will be just easier if we use DDR2/3/4 standard.
What is RAM Timings?
Apart from speed RAM also has time ratings, called timings. Expressed as 5-5-5-15 or 8-8-8-24. Now the things get little more technically complicated here. This portrays the amount of time it takes the module to run a single bit of data around the rows and columns of the memory. Generally, it’s referred as “latency”.
Latency works with how fast the ram module can process the components and in this case the lower the numbers the better. So, low latency means faster processing speed, so it makes faster data transfer to CPU and faster processing to your computer. High-quality expensive RAM can be overclocked for faster access and low latency.
How does it affect to my PC?
To be fair, it really doesn’t change a lot. Faster speed and lower latency RAM will, of course, increase the performance technically. But it works on so microscopic level that we cannot appreciate such difference.
Faster RAM will boost the performance of your PC in specific benchmarks, but in general, terms having more RAM is better than having a faster speed RAM. So if you are in a situation with two options 1) 8 GB RAM with 3200 Speed and 2) 16 GB RAM with 2400. Always go for option 2.
DDR2/DDR3/DDR4? What’s the difference?
RAM has different generation types, upgraded versions allow faster data transfer and more storage. DDR-Double Data Storage- is an upgrade to single data storage ram from back in 2000. We are currently using DDR4 RAMs. DDR3 RAMs were announced in 2007 and still available on older PCs. By each upgrade of RAMs upgraded the speed and memory bus capabilities. The only thing off about RAM is that it’s not backward or forward compatible. If your computers board has DDR3 slots then it will only support DDR3 RAMs. You can’t upgrade or downgrade the standard.
Though the case is different in terms of speed. If your motherboard supports DDR4 RAM with speed 3600MHz then you can use 2400 speed without any problems.
Also, your computer may not run your RAM at its highest potential. Suppose your DDR4-3600 RAM works at DDR4-3000 because your motherboard sets the RAM speeds to the lowest by default. You can solve this by going to BIOS menu and enable the Intel’s Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) or overclock the RAM by yourself.
So now you know the whole fuss about RAMs and the speeds. After all this upgrading a RAM could still be difficult to choose. So before upgrading your laptop or desktop take advice from a professional computer repair service.
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