Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Cas2 vs Cas3 ?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Cas2 vs Cas3 ?

    Just what are the performance differences? Are they major? Anyone got any links or able to shed any light on the subject?
    Thanks in advance
    MiNIoN
    MiNIoN
    helixx_@hotmail.com

  • #2
    I´m no memory expert but I will tell here my personal experience. Maybe someone will care to comment about it.

    For what I´ve seen, cas 2 makes *some* diference, not something you would really notice. I have an Athlon 600 + Gigabyte GA-7IX + 2 x 64 Dimms generic pc100. The motherboard bios has many options to tweak the memory, but I left it to auto. It assigned the folowing parameters to my ram:

    SDRAM Trc Timing value 8
    SDRAM Trp Timing value 3
    SDRAM TRas Timing value 6
    SDRAM CAS Latency 3
    SDRAM Trcd Timing value 3

    I could get than it was cas3, nothing else. Ok, the SDRAM dimms were cas3 for sure, cheap stuff. But I got in tweaking it. I changed CAS Latency to 2, rebooted, and it worked. It was stable, benchmarked it, and yes, there was a performance increase, but nothing worth talking about.

    I got back into the bios settings and tweaked it by trial-and-error: didn´t really had a clue what I was doing, but in memory settings, lower is better, rigth?

    So to sum it up I changed the settings above to:
    4
    2
    2
    2
    2

    And now, the sytem is stable, 3dmark99 went from 5750 to 5980 3dmarks, and the memory benchmark in sandra 2000 went to 370/434, higher than the reference Athlon 600 system.

    So cas2 makes a difference? Yes. But tweaking other things does much more.

    Comment


    • #3
      CAS-2 memory is faster than CAS-3, but not by much. Maybe 2-3% noticable difference. However, if you plan on overclocking, CAS-2 memory has a better shot of making higher FSB speeds, even if you have to slow it down to CAS-3. I'm warning you, this is just a "maybe" type thing, nothing really tangible.
      Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

      Comment


      • #4
        Thanks for the input everyone - much appreciated. As it turns out I (think) I'll be getting Cas2 PC133 - that is if (as I suspect) Century is indeed Cas2.
        I had Winbond Cas3 (for 2 weeks) but will move it on.
        Cheers
        MiNIoN
        MiNIoN
        helixx_@hotmail.com

        Comment


        • #5
          MiNIoN,

          Wombat is right, as usual. You can actually see graphs of the performance between CAS2 and CAS3 at this site:

          http://www.micron.com/mti/msp/html/speedoption.html

          In fact, the Crucial site is a great (and accurate!) resource for answers to all your memory questions.

          John

          Comment


          • #6
            I have two vanilla PC100 128 MB dimm modules (from what I gather, they're not CAS2 - mem speed is 8ns).

            They run perfectly stable at 124 MHz CAS2. I also had a PC66 10ns module that worked fine at 124 MHz CAS3, but I haven't tried it at CAS2.

            Switching from CAS3 to CAS2 and disabling Video Memory Caching/Shadowing cut down my SETI work unit time from 7 hours to 6. That's a VERY inpressive performance gain, but I haven't tried which of the options it comes from.

            Comment


            • #7
              Wow, this discussion couldn't have come at a better time -- I'm was just considering between purchasing CAS2 and CAS3 RAM.

              In terms of price, there isn't TOO much of a difference, but would PC100 CAS2, or PC133 CAS3 be better?

              I have a PII-350 (to be upgraded to a P3-600e in about a month), Abit BX6r2, Win2K, G400DH oem. I do want to try some overclocking on this.

              Thanks!

              Comment


              • #8
                Excellent link, Johnny Ray. I just wish they specified what order they were using for 2-3-2. I think they use CAS, CAS to RAS, and Precharge RAS. If so, that's whay I'm using from 120 to 133. But the order in my BIOS (Award 4.51PG) is different:
                RAS to CAS, Precharge RAS, CAS, so I until recently thought I was using 3-2-2.

                So I wish Micron had made the order they were using clearer.

                In case people don't know, the Futuremark test is probably 3dmark99.
                PIII 500e @667
                Soyo SY6BA+IV
                Iwill Slotket II
                G400 32MB Max
                Nokia 445Xi 21"
                and POS 14"
                Aureal Vortex Superquad
                256MB PC133
                IBM DPTA 20.5GB 7200rpm
                Toshiba 8/40 DVD

                Comment


                • #9
                  Guacamole:
                  I'd go for the PC133. Otherwise you'll really wish you had it later. Also, odds are good that it will do CAS2 @ 100MHz.
                  Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Go here: http://www.overclockin.com/reviews/R...oundup2-2.html

                    RAB


                    [This message has been edited by RAB (edited 10 March 2000).]
                    AMD K6III-450; Epox EP-MVP3G5; G400DH32; Maxtor 10gig UDMA66; 128meg PC100; Aureal SQ2500 sound; PCI Modem Blaster; Linksys 10/100 NIC; Mag 800V 19"; AL ACS54 4 speaker sound; Logitech wireless mouse; Logitech Wingman Extreme (great for lefties)

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X