CL2 or CL3

[William J. Lunsford]

I'm looking at a Gigabyte GA-K8NS motherboard (Memory: 3x 184-pin Supports
DDR 266/333/400 Max capacity: 3GB). Do I need CL2 or CL3 memory?

 

[Jim]

A quick glance of the mobo manual doesn't indicate a preference. In
general, it seems Gigabyte is not in the high performance end of the
spectrum, therefore CL2 can be very iffy. DDR is more finicky than the old
SDR RAM of prior generations, so it's always best to use a memory
configurator, such as often found at the memory vendor's site, just to be
sure.

But the general rule is, CL3 is slower and will always work (at least in
terms of CAS). CL2 is considered performance memory, and will often NOT
work in anything but high performance mobo's, esp. only those w/ voltage
adjustments. CL2.5 is middle of the road, some non-performance boards will
tolerate CL2.5, other low end mobo's may not.

So you've outlined two extremes here, and asked us to chose. Kind of
difficult not knowing much about Gigabyte, but the *best* choice is most
probably CL2.5. It's not so demanding that your system will choke on it
(sometimes CL2 on a non-performance mobo won't even boot!), yet is an
improvement over CL3. And if the mobo can't handle even CL2.5, it should be
able to pull back to CL3 w/o much problem. The real stickler is CL2, that's
a tough haul for the mobo UNLESS you know for certain your motherboard is
capable, which only someone using that mobo and memory combination can say
for sure (and it may require a VDIMM voltage increase as well to maintain
stability -- if you don't have that options available in the BIOS, it's
probably not a good choice). That's why the memory configurators are
helpful, those are TESTED combinations. But if you simply want to "wing
it", again, I recommend CL 2.5 as a compromise. Good performance, very
likely to work in most quality mobo's, and can pull back to CL3 if necessary
with less problems.

HTH

Jim

 

[William J. Lunsford]

Thank you for your help!

A quick glance of the mobo manual doesn't indicate a preference. In
general, it seems Gigabyte is not in the high performance end of the
spectrum, therefore CL2 can be very iffy. DDR is more finicky than the
old
SDR RAM of prior generations, so it's always best to use a memory
configurator, such as often found at the memory vendor's site, just to be
sure.

But the general rule is, CL3 is slower and will always work (at least in
terms of CAS). CL2 is considered performance memory, and will often NOT
work in anything but high performance mobo's, esp. only those w/ voltage
adjustments. CL2.5 is middle of the road, some non-performance boards
will
tolerate CL2.5, other low end mobo's may not.

So you've outlined two extremes here, and asked us to chose. Kind of
difficult not knowing much about Gigabyte, but the *best* choice is most
probably CL2.5. It's not so demanding that your system will choke on it
(sometimes CL2 on a non-performance mobo won't even boot!), yet is an
improvement over CL3. And if the mobo can't handle even CL2.5, it should
be
able to pull back to CL3 w/o much problem. The real stickler is CL2,
that's
a tough haul for the mobo UNLESS you know for certain your motherboard is
capable, which only someone using that mobo and memory combination can say
for sure (and it may require a VDIMM voltage increase as well to maintain
stability -- if you don't have that options available in the BIOS, it's
probably not a good choice). That's why the memory configurators are
helpful, those are TESTED combinations. But if you simply want to "wing
it", again, I recommend CL 2.5 as a compromise. Good performance, very
likely to work in most quality mobo's, and can pull back to CL3 if
necessary
with less problems.

HTH

Jim