KHX 3200 vs 3500

ponti

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Mar 20, 2004
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Just for reference, I have an A7V600 and Athlon 2700+ with no real plans to overclock, though I might upgrade my CPU in the very distant future, like when my RAM will be probably be obsolete anyway so this quation won't matter.

Now my question: The price difference between the Kingston HyperX 3200 and 3500 is so small that it makes no difference to me, but the timings are CAS2 3-2-6 T1 (in all honesty, I don't know what these numbers really mean)for the 3200 and CAS2 3-3-7 T1 on the 3500. Will the tighter (as I've seen the word used, though I don't claim to understand it) times on the 3200 give me better performance or will the extra MHz headroom of the 3500 be more help?

Again, I'm not really looking at this in terms of overclocking just in straight gaming performance. The Athlon XP 2700+ can't reach the 400MHz level of the KXH 3200 anyway, so the overclocking point seems pretty moot.

Thanks for your recommendations!
 

Coyote

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Oct 1, 2003
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Hi Ponti, My two cents worth- I'd stick with the pc 3200 because it has much better/tighter timings and I don't see where/when you might possible take advantage of the possible higher FSB speeds. In other words, I would'nt purchase the slower ram to use now since the higher FSB will likely never be neccessary.

The slower timings listed for the pc 3500 ram are prolly for when you're using the high FSB. If the pc 3500 was underclocked to pc 2700 speeds I wonder if those timings could be improved upon.

Although THG put out an article basically saying tighter timings was'nt all that important to performance, I still prefer it. Here's a link to that article <A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index-12.html" target="_new">http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index-12.html</A>

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Win98SE<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Coyote on 03/24/04 11:51 AM.</EM></FONT></P>