533mhz better than 667mhz (ram)?

I've seen a lot of reviews saying that 533mhz has higher performance than 667. Is this true? Am I reading wrong? Is 667 really worth the extra 200$?

 

They are about the same, performance wise. There may be certain applications and benchmarks where one is faster than the other.

Get the cheaper RAM. 667 is not worth 200 bucks.


667 has a higher clock speed but also higher latencies. 533 is slower but has lower latencies. In certain benchmarks, 533 is faster. There is a thread in this forum about the issue, use the search feature to find it.

 

i have a related question here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=92320

if anyone can help id appreciate it

 

There's no reason why 533 would be faster. If you have 667, you can always clock it down to 533 if you like.

533 doesn't neccesarily have lower latencies. It might have (and it typically does), but technically, any clock speed can have any latency.

But yes, low-latency 533MHz might be faster than high-latency 667MHz. But then it's a bit of an apples vs oranges comparison. At similar latencies, 667 is faster. (It might not be noticeably faster because the system doesn't need the extra bandwidth, but the ram is still faster, and it will at least not be any slower than 533)

 

For beat by beat transmission, 533 is definite faster than 667 simply because the lower latency. 667 will get burst transmission faster when the data block is large. The multimedia processing will prefer 667, however no much differences in daily typing and browsing.

 

If it's going to cost you $200 more for the faster RAM, I would go with the 533 MHz.

Here's the 533 vs. 667 MHz thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=67099

 

oh **** i was almost about to buy the 667 ram

 

Lower latency? where does this lower latency come from?

If we are comparing a low-latency 533 module with a high-latency 667, then yes, you're right. But why not compare a low-latency 667 with a high-latency 533 then? Or maybe even compare the fairly, take 553 vs 667 at the *same* latencies?

667 is faster, all else being equal. All else might not be equal, so yes, it is possible to find some 533 modules that perform better than some 667 modules because they have lower latencies. But then it's no longer a question of whether 667 is faster than 553. Which it is. (Although it might not make a noticeable difference, of course)

 

533 usually has a CAS latency of 4 while 667 usually has a CAS latency of 5.

 

I haven't been looking lately but has any of the top ram makers released any CAS 4 - 667 for laptops?

 

No the memory frequency matters a lot actually. It's just that due to manufacturing difficulties, the 667's CAS latency is comparatively high. Which just means it's twiddling its thumbs waiting during more memory cycles while the 533 is huffing and chugging. So its faster frequency is pretty much canceled out.