What RAM is better? 3200 or 3500 (may seem obvious)

[billysardar]

What RAM is better for overclocking? On the Kingston website the stated timing for 3200 is 2-3-2-6-1 (CAS Latency 2) and for 3500 is 2-3-3-7-1 (CAS Latency 2). Now I assume the increase in memory speed of 33MHz is going to have more of a positive effect than the negative effect of the more relaxed timings. What I want to know is whether you would have to relax the 3200 timings to the same as the 3500 if you tried to o/c the 3200 to 434MHz, or would you have to relax them even more? If the former is true then why not buy 3200 and o/c it? I suspect the latter is true because why else would 3500 cost more?

[Korky]

Laxed timings - high fsb, low timings - lower fsb, i believe the pc3500 is the better for keeping the balance.

[GuruJockStrap]

The PC3500 is probably exactly the same ram as PC3200 but is running with slightly relaxed timings in order to meet the higher speed. I reckon with a little more volts you could get the PC3500 running at 2-3-2-6-1.

[blockers]

...and also, the 3500 is already clocked higher, so with a little more voltage it should allow you to get higher fsb.

[billysardar]

GuruJockStrap: Are you saying that you might as well buy 3200 RAM? Then why is 3500 more expensive? Do they charge more because they can?

[acidrainy]

If there ain't a great deal of price diff, go for the 3500.
I did that with my decision, it lets me get tighter timings

[spikegifted]

For all intents and purposes, the two sticks have the same latencies. When you're looking at latencies, the most important figure to check out is CAS. I'm not suggesting that the RAS and the rest are not importatn, they are, but when you're looking at the telling performance effects - CAS is the one that really matters. So, as the rest of the folks are saying, go with the higher rated one if they're the same price. However, you should also bear in mind that sometime the higher rated sticks are just overclocked version of the slower ones. So, you've been warned...