*warning* long post, sorry!
imacdaddy said:
I just bought the 2GB Hyperperformance for my iMac G5 last week. Supposidly the Hyper is faster...the difference between that and the Optival is SPD EEPROM 2.5v and CAS 2 on the Hyper.
OK thanks iMD. But does anyone know (or can someone please run some tests if they have access to both chips) just how much faster it is? I have read that the diff between CAS2 and CAS3 is about 8-10%. But you said it's a diff of 2.5 vs. 2 in this case. I want to purchase the ram to upgrade my MB but I really need to know if double the price is actually worth it...
Also their site does say (confusingly) that the OPTIVAL is "SODIMM 128x64 DDR2 64x8" and CAS 3, and the Hyperperformance is "SODIMM 128x64 SDDRAM 64x8" (what is the diff here, if any??) and CAS 2.5. Is this the major diff between Omni ram and other ram like OWC then, their CAS is actually .5 behind the "cutting edge"? BTW sorry iMD that your ram isn't actually what you thought...
OWC brand ram is, according to the specs on their site, CAS 5 (?!) and their higher cost ram "Techworks" has a CL (is that core latency?) of 5 but makes no mention of the CAS (so I guess the OWC ram spec is a typo and is meant to say CL=5 NOT CAS=5). It does however say that the OWC ram is "64x8 device based 128x64 Module" and the TW ram is simply "128x64 Configuration". Sorry I don't know that much about the nitty gritty of ram specs, so I really don't know if this is just describing the way the board is set up or if it is actually indicating a speed diff. Hard to tell when the CAS info isn't listed...
EDIT:
http://www.spodesabode.com/content/article/memguide/6 (I read pages 6-8) gave me a better idea of what CAS latency (not Core latency :blush: ) is. So if the CAS of OWC and Techworks ram really is 5, isn't that a bad thing?? Like really OLD tech?? So to get the fastest ram possible right now at CAS2, I'm looking at brands like Crucial for a huge price premium, or taking the (apparently very) slight performance hit of CAS2.5 for Omni's HP or a little worse for Optival at CAS3? It would appear that either the benchmarks done on the site above (on a PC, not a Mac) weren't very accurate, the fact that they were done on a PC makes a diff, or my previous reading of about 8-10% differences between CAS2 and CAS3 weren't accurate. Anyone know for sure? Anyone know what programs, FCP/DVDSP/CS2 for example, am I likely to notice any difference, if at all? Would the faster ram help with Rosetta programs enough to make it worth the xtra $$? /END EDIT
And as an aside, why the heck don't diff spec ram sticks have diff product names?? It would be much easier if, for example, PC2-5300 meant, say, CAS3, PC2-5325 was CAS2.5 and PC2-5350 meant CAS2 etc etc!! Apparently not all PC2-5300 ram is created equal and many sites don't specify what you're buying in detail, which makes this so much harder than it needs to be. Not to mention it being easy for IT companies to sell lower-spec ram to unwitting customers for the same prices as slightly faster stuff!
Thanks in advance for any clarification someone can provide on this and any test results!
M
P.S. Can a poll be created to see which brand of ram most people are buying for their MB & MBP upgrades?
P.P.S. Thanks for reading, THANKS!! for an answers m(_ _)m, and again my apologies for the long (and only barely on topic) post.
