pc4200 vs. pc4300, pc5300 vs. pc5400

what the heck is the difference?

 

If u looked at the specs you would see that pc42/4300 is 533mhz ram w/ 4 cas, and pc53/5400 ram is 667mhz w/ 5 cas latency

 

exactly, but in regards to how much performance one offers over the other... i have no idea and would like to know the performance difference...

 

The higher the # the better. A PC4200 533MHz is slower than a PC5300 667MHz as more data is transfered.

 

But you have to consider the cpu though. If you had a pentium m and install ddr667. That is not going to give you any extra performance than ddr533 because the pentium m has a bus speed of 533 or 400.

 

DDR2 RAM isn't that much of an improvement over "slower" DDR RAM because of the higher latency. If you can find DDR533 RAM with a latency of 3, you may notice some improvements, but still not much. Dual channel is a much more effective way of getting "faster" RAM.

And if you put in faster RAM than your motherboard can support, it will simply slow down and run at the highest speed that your board can support.

As for PC4200 vs PC4300, remember that these numbers are an approximate bandwidth, so its not exactly 4200 MB/s or 4300 MB/s, but somewhere in between. The same is true with PC5400/PC5300. I learned it as PC4200 and PC5400, so thats always what I've used.

 

Do you guys honestly think I'm that stupid? I am well aware of 533mhz being faster than 667mhz. Please READ THE TITLE BETTER. If you look at what vs. what, I am never comparing 533mhz to 667mhz. PC4200 and PC4300 are both 533mhz, what is the difference between THOSE TWO? PC5300 and PC5400 are both 667mhz, what is the difference between THESE TWO?

 

No need to get hostile.

To answer your question and hopefully avoid an arguement, there is no difference between PC5300 and PC5400. That number (5300) is calculated by multiplying the clockspeed of the RAM by 8.

667 * 8 = 5336.

Some manufacturers round up, some down; it is more common for them to do the latter.

 

Is there a method to the madness? Why 8?

 

The RAM classification number represents the Maximum Theoretical Data Transfer Rate of the module, and is actually calculated like this:

DIMMs transfer 64 bits of data at one time, so that equation would now look like this:

There is no real point in writing "64 / 8" because that is simply 8, so the equation is shortened to:

Multiplying the clockspeed by 8 gets you that classification number. PC5300 has a theoretical maximum transfer rate of 5,300MB/s. Of course you do not get that much bandwidth in real life.