--Your Opinion--

Ok. Its a common debate. Does the brand of Memory (RAM) matter... Vote on your opinion. Personally I think it does matter slightly. But what do YOU think???

 

No! On some notebooks it does.

 

While they aren't necessarily faster than their competitors, I think that some brands have better quality and reliability - very important IMO.

 

Yes, it does matter, although not a whole lot for notebooks.

There is a reason why some modules are more expensive than others, and that is because they are made of faster memory modules with better RAM latencies(the lower the better). For example this G SKill Module is rated at 4-4-4-12, whereas this Transcend is at 5-5-5-15. Not all of them are priced accordingly as the brand name often messes up the pricing. As well, slow ram have lower latencies, for example PC-3200 DDR2 often are 3-3-3-10 but can only run at 200 Mhz FSB. Whereas a PC-6400 DDR2 will most likely be 5-5-5-15 or above.

 

You can check your ram latencies using CPU-Z under the SPD tab.

 

No it doesn't matter.
Tim

 

It matters more on enthusiast notebooks and desktops (i.e., those marketed at gamers and tweakers), not so much on notebooks/desktops that are OEM, budget, or designed with business stability in mind. The second type often is set in BIOS to run RAM at a specified speed, without the ability to tweak it to run faster, even if the RAM is designed to do so.

The one reason the brand of RAM matters in those cases is for RMA policy if it goes bad. Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, OCZ --these companies have lifetime warranties and a good reputation for service/returns. There are others out there that do as well (I haven't dealt with every memory company out there), but buying generic RAM may not get you the same type of guarantee. Buy the budget-level notebook RAM from a brand-name vendor, and you should be happy.

 

No disrespect to anyone but this question is very close to asking, "a Ferrari and a Volkswagen are both doing 60MPH, which one is going faster?". The systems that need certain brand names are poorly designed or running out of RAM specs. And with those systems they do not like all "brand name" RAM they like certain ones. So that would be a characteristic of the system not the RAM, refer back to first sentence. Really all DRAM is made by 4 or 5 company's so all we are talking about is PCB's. PCB's are not rocket science, get a lifetime warranty and you are fine unless you know you have a badly designed system (tweaked) and you will be fine. Let's not reinvent the wheel.