I've been doing a lot of reading up on timings and I read that when accessing a row of memory, the CPU sends the message to the memory and memory will delay "tCL" clocks until returning the info and any other info needed on that same row is sent every clock without delay. I don't know exactly how data is organized on memory, but I would assume it is fairly sequential. So is it possible that having the faster clock will more than make up for the longer delay in the long run.
For example, DDR2 800 cas 4 has a clock of 2.5 ns (nano seconds), and a cas latency of 10 ns, while DDR2 1066 cas 6 has a clock of 1.875 ns and a cas latency of 11.25 ns.
The 800 is going to beat the 1066 at sending the first bit of data, but by the fourth bit of data (assuming all 4 are on the same row) the 1066 wins, 17.5 ns vs 16.875 ns. Well say you are opening a program or loading a level on a video game and it was reading 4 bits of data on each row from 100 rows. You would save 62.5 ns (not factoring tRCD and tRP).
Looking at this I would say a faster clock is always better (with the exception of really loose timings compared to tight timings) and if you are getting more than 4 bits of data per row this would be even more of an advantage.
Any thoughts on this?