Stumbled on a stat about DDR2 RAM latency that made me feel old

I was digging through an old PC Gamer issue from 2007 (found it in a box my dad gave me) and saw an ad bragging about DDR2-800 with CAS 5 latency. That was considered fast back then, you know? Now my DDR5 kit runs at CAS 36 and nobody bats an eye. Has anyone else noticed how much those numbers have climbed, or is it just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

amy85822d ago

Actually I think you're looking at this backwards. The CAS 36 on DDR5 is misleading because the actual timings in nanoseconds are way better than DDR2's 5. A CAS 5 at 800MHz equals something like 12.5 nanoseconds per cycle, while CAS 36 at 4800MHz is only about 7.5 nanoseconds. Plus DDR5 has on-die ECC and way more bandwidth so it crushes DDR2 in real world performance. My friend built a retro PC with DDR2 and it chokes on simple web browsing today. Those old latency numbers look impressive on paper but they're just marketing smoke and mirrors compared to modern memory controllers.

jamesmason22d ago

Wow @amy858, you totally nailed it with those real world comparisons!

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