What Do These Numbers Mean On Ram

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

i know i been posting alot of Q's lately, but hey, i wanna know stuff. i have transcend DDR400 ram, and it has these numbers on the package:

(pc3200/32mx8/3-3-3)

its a 512 stick, and i know what the 3200 part means , but what is the rest of this shit, and what is the importance? i see peeps sometimes put stuff like 2-0-8-8 ecc after their memory (something like that) so i assumed it must be important in some way.

here is the model number of my ram stick (sounds kinda sexy )
TS64MLD64V4F3

[3RA1N1AC]

i think 32mx8 means... 8 memory chips, 32mb each? since you have 512, maybe that's 8 on each side.

3-3-3 is the cas latency. also known as the memory timing.
"CAS Latency (CL): A feature of memory that reflects the number of clock cycles that pass while data is written to memory."

[Mïcrösöül°V³]

does that 3-3-3 have any meaning as far as being better than others, or not as good as others. i need some kind of reference so i understand the complete meaning of the numbers.

[tesco]

Originally posted by Mïcrösöül°V³@23 March 2004 - 19:08
does that 3-3-3 have any meaning as far as being better than others, or not as good as others. i need some kind of reference so i understand the complete meaning of the numbers. 

the lower than number the better, becuase the lower the number the less time it takes for the ram to 'react' to what its being asked to write or read. that is how I understand it...

oh and you can also overclock the ram by lowering those timings in your bios. when people say try loosening the timings when they are talking about overclocking they mean to make teh numbers higher, and sometimes that helps the ram speed to go higher.

[Marius24]

so what would be a good or bad number to have?

[tesco]

Originally posted by Marius24@23 March 2004 - 19:18
so what would be a good or bad number to have?

its ok i think...but the lowest you can get is the best.