Impact of memory latency on performance

Since latencies refer to delays, lower is better. That doesn't mean you should hop into your motherboard's BIOS and set each memory timing option to its lowest possible value, though. Memory modules are rated for a specific set of latencies at a given clock speed, and they're generally not stable with lower latencies. A DIMM's latencies are usually expressed as a series of four hyphenated numbers corresponding to the CAS latency, RAS-to-CAS delay, RAS precharge, and active-to-precharge delay. Low latency DDR400, for example, is generally rated for 2-2-2-5 timings at 400MHz. That refers to two cycles of CAS latency, RAS-to-CAS delay, and RAS precharge, and five cycles of active-to-precharge delay.