CAS Latency

[Dawson 1st MRB]

I know what the ram timings literary mean (how long it takes to look up info in a row, column, some such bullshit), but I have no idea what the numbers mean in the real world. When buying ram, should I give a shit about these numbers? Is there anyway to overclock Ram to get these numbers lower? Is it worth trying to overclock the RAM?

I've got 4 gigs, but I run out when I start using photoshop and other adobe suite programs. I'm going to move up to 8 in order to take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.

[Goodwin 1st MRB]

I know what the ram timings literary mean (how long it takes to look up info in a row, column, some such bullshit), but I have no idea what the numbers mean in the real world. When buying ram, should I give a shit about these numbers? Is there anyway to overclock Ram to get these numbers lower? Is it worth trying to overclock the RAM?

I've got 4 gigs, but I run out when I start using photoshop and other adobe suite programs. I'm going to move up to 8 in order to take full advantage of the 64-bit architecture.

What OS are you running?

XP-64? Vista-64? Win7-64?

Windows 7 will support so much RAM it's RIDICULOUS (like, up to 128 GB or something). And with RAM being so cheap these days, most people shove as much as they can (it's sick to see people running 12 GB +).

I'm not sure on the other specs of your system, but there could be bottlenecks elsewhere. I run 3GB of RAM with Vista (yuck), and have no issues when using Photoshop/AfterEffects/etc. Often I'll have Photoshop up with other stuff such as Eclipse (Java), Dreamweaver and other programs or games without any noticeable performance degradation. So I would figure 4GB would be more than effective at handling that stuff.

However - I think know there are ways to adjust RAM timings - but it's complicated and it's also my understanding that you can really eff up some stuff if you get it wrong.

I wouldn't recommend that. With how cheap RAM is these days, if your system will take 8 GB? Toss in 8 GB and don't worry about it. Sure beats messing something up and starting from square 1 with having to repurchase RAM you might screw up trying to OC.

[Dawson 1st MRB]

I'm running win7 64 bit

I like to watch how much ram my system is usiung and I just notice a lot that Photoshop along with large photos reUires huge amounts of ram

still didn't answer my question of if it is something I should seriously consider when buying ram. I've been on some tech forums and there were some strong indications that these timings didn't mater so long as one had plenty of ram. Which I just don't quite understand.

[Gooderham 1st MRB]

I remember trying to figure this out when I got my new computer. Check out this site, it has a pretty good explanation.

CAS Latency