Will 800mhz CL5 ram run at 667mhz CL4?

So, I ordered a X61s and decided to get fill up the RAM from Newegg. Not reading into much, I saw the processor bus speed was 800mhz so I bought a 4gb kit of OCZ ddr2 6400 CL5. It wasn't until later that I realized the santa rosa chipset has an 800 mhz processor bus but a 667 memory bus.

While I know this ram will still work just fine clocked down; I am curious will the latency still be 5? If so, I'm contemplating buying some 5300 CL4 and then selling this stuff.

Any thoughts?

 

The Newegg listing or the manufacturer product page should tell you what timings the memory will use at a given frequency. If neither tell you, you can try it and find out with CPUZ or a similar program.

Honestly, in the grand scheme of things it won't matter. The pricing between 800MHz memory and 667MHz memory and performance between CL5 and CL4 are both so small, you're not going to notice any difference between your two memory choices.

Just stick with the 800MHz stuff; it's not worth the effort.

 

Just stick with the ones you ordered, there is no need at all to change them out even if they don't run at CL4 at 667Mhz.

But typically 800Mhz CL5 memory runs at 1CL lower at 133Mhz slower speeds. So 667 basically gives CL4 and 533Mhz will give you CL3 if it's 800 + CL5 standard.

But then again, even if the memory has settings for lower latency, it's more up to the motherboard/bios in your laptop to decide whatever settings to run at, it doesn't nessecarily run at lowest possible cas latency even if the memory can do it without issues.

 

Thanks for the quick answers guys. I checked OCZ and newegg but didn't see anything about different speeds.

I know it will not have a noticeable effect to me, but deep down inside there's an ocd part of me that will know that it could be off. I'll just keep telling myself that it works better. Once my laptop arrives, I'll post my findings for the record.

 

See this post for the timings of the OCZ PC6400 module.

John

 

Thanks for referencing my post. For some reason, the image does not appear properly and I am uploading once more.

Below are the timings of OCZ 2x2GB DDR2-800 Dual Channel Kit:




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Thanks for sharing that ramgen. I was actually able to find someone to take it off my hands at cost, so no money lost. I ordered 4GB of Kingston HyperX 4-4-4-12 pc2 5300 from Newegg for only a dollar more. No harm, no foul. Unfortunately the notebook is still yet to be shipped though so I have plenty of time for it to be shipped.