Do I Need High Performance Memory?

Having been in the memory industry for years, including working for one of the major high performance memory manufacturers, I can say without a doubt "probably not". Unless you are a gamer, overclocker, or system builder who wants RAM that looks good, you will probably not see any performance improvement by spending hundreds more on high performance memory.

Low Latency Memory

Low latency allows the memory to perform read/write functions at an infinitesimally faster rate. However, this slight performance boost will only show up in programs that put a serious strain on the memory, such as games and video editing software. In normal use such as browsing the web, using office applications, etc, you will not get any boost at all. Even in the programs for which high performance memory is designed, the performance difference will be less than 3-5%. Is this really worth the serious amount of extra money? In my opinion no, but some people will argue otherwise.

Overclocked Memory

The other option besides low-latency memory is memory that can be overclocked to extremely high speeds. In my opinion, this type of memory is more valuable than low-latency memory. This is because the biggest performance boost from overclocking comes from the overclocking of the CPU, not the memory itself. Overclocking the CPU can give a large boost to system performance, although I wouldn't recommend it to the vast majority of people. But if you're going to overclock your CPU, you'll need RAM that can keep up. This is where overclockable RAM can be beneficial, although finding high-speed memory is not difficult and shouldn't be terribly expensive.

Heatsinks on Memory

A lot is made of the heatsinks (also known as heatspreaders) that come attached to high performance memory and the idea that they lower the heat of memory, allowing it to be overclocked higher, or that it spreads the heat more evenly among the chips to keep individual chips from failing. However, no data has ever been produced that shows that heatsinks actually lower the heat of memory modules. In fact, in my testing I've found that on some occasions heatsinks can actually raise the temperature of the RAM. This is especially the case for registered memory, which has smaller chips on it. The heat coming off of these smaller chips can get trapped between the circuit board and the heatsinks, causing pockets of superheated air, leading to more problems than if the memory was uncovered. So take anything having to do with heatsinks with a grain of salt. More than anything, they're made to look cool for system builders with case windows!

As someone who has worked with all types of RAM for years, I recommend to everyone to just get memory with default latencies and speeds, because the value of it is far higher than with that of "high performance" memory. Don't believe me? Here is what PC World has to say about low latency RAM. Feel free to let us know if you disagree!