ddr2 667 v/s 533

I just bought 2 gigs of ddr2 533 sodimm ram (2 sticks of 1 gig each).. as soon as I received the shipment, I noticed a deal which gave me 667 ddr2 for almost the same price..

my question, since I can't return the ram I bought, how much of a difference is there between the two speeds.. Should I mourn and whine? In terms of everyday usage, and games, how much of a difference would it have made? Also, does 667 consume more power, and therefore emit more heat, and consume more battery?

Thanks

 

there is 667 - 533 = 134 difference in speed

 

lol.. thnks, I was struggling with the math.. had reached 133 as the difference, but i wud've taken hours to reach 134...

seriously though, will it translate directly into a performance increase of 25%, if ram is being used to the max?

 

haha, ok all jokes aside. there really isnt much performance gain from 667 compared to 533. Very little. this is due to high cas latency of the 667. however, if you are comparing ram that have the same cas latency then the 667 will provide a bigger bang.

 

moral to the story, the faster memory will perform faster provided all other things are equal.

 

well, i wasn't trying to be funny, that's what the difference is. whatever data the ram is handling, it will handle at 133mhz faster. you have to ask yourself if it's worth it to sweat 133mhz. if it is, then sell your ram or something and get the 667, if you're cool with a 133mhz difference, then keep it.

 

Yeah like said before, it isnt much of a performance increase, but there still is one. You wouldnt notice anything really in every day use, ie. internet, word processing, etc. But in things like hard-core gaming, CADD, video/image editing there would be a difference in performance.

 

No it won't. The CL is higher on most (all??) current 667 ram. So any performance gain in frequency is lost in latency.

 

thanks for the comments.. if it helps, here are the links to the ram

the 533 one..
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820227110
and the 667 one..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227099

cas latency is 4 for the 533, and 5 for the 667.. does that mean the difference will not be 25% (or 134MHz)? Is there a quantitative equation on how cas latency and speed inter-relate to affect performance..?

I'm planning to squeeze every fps I can from my laptop, so thanks again for all the help

 

Hi Sameer,

At this point of posting, the gain is little or not worth the trouble of buying another 2 sticks of DDR2 667MHz and having to dispose of your 533 sticks. You wont gain 133MHz due to higher latency.

In most cases, it will be more advantageous to buy more RAM. Of course most of us cannot afford nor justify the 4 GB expansion yet. So your 2GB DDR2 533 should be a sweet deal.

Being wishful, I hope they make CAS 4 DDR2 667 not to long from now at an affordable price. Now that will be enough for me to junk my 533s. LOL.

 

Thanks everyone, I guess I shall stick to my 533s till the 667 with low cas latency are released...

 

I agree 100%! This has been brought up on this forum several times in the past.

I have never seen so much dis-information concerning DDR2 ram.. Most people will swear that 677 is ALWAYS faster than 533, heck look at the bigger number!

Attached is Corsair’s white paper on the problems of DDR2 latency.

View attachment 2919

 

Thanks hydra, the paper link you gave was pretty useful, almost what I was looking for..

i'm sure this would benefit a lot of other people too..

 

Thats why I got G skills LA series (5400), 2x1gb and 4-4-4 latencies

 

What is the difference between 667mhz 5400 and 5300 memory?