big fat NEWB question

memory.. what's cas, and what does it mean
I was also looking at RAM on newegg.. what's CL=3 unbuffered, well what's CL and what does 3 unbuffered mean.. do you want that number high or low?

Also, to overclock RAM you set the voltage up, right?
Does it matter what the manufactured rate is, is there anything that is superior to another, if so why?

thanks

CAS Latency (also referred to as latency) is the amount of time it takes for your memory to respond to a command. Specifically, it is the length of time between memory receiving a command to read data, and the first piece of data being output from memory. Latency is measured in terms of clock cycles and is often noted as CL2 (two clock cycles) or CL3 (three clock cycles).

CL2 is faster than CL3.

To overclock memory you need to change the speed it is running at not raise the voltage. Raising the voltage will often allow memory to run at a higher speed.

You change the memory speed by increasing the front side bus also called the fsb, doing this also increases the speed of every other device on the fsb including the cpu,agp and pci devices.

Some motherboards allow the memory to run at a different speed in relation to the fsb usually + or - the pci bus speed or + or - 33mhz at a 133mhz fsb.

Placid said:

CAS Latency (also referred to as latency) is the amount of time it takes for your memory to respond to a command. Specifically, it is the length of time between memory receiving a command to read data, and the first piece of data being output from memory. Latency is measured in terms of clock cycles and is often noted as CL2 (two clock cycles) or CL3 (three clock cycles).

CL2 is faster than CL3.

To overclock memory you need to change the speed it is running at not raise the voltage. Raising the voltage will often allow memory to run at a higher speed.

You change the memory speed by increasing the front side bus also called the fsb, doing this also increases the speed of every other device on the fsb including the cpu,agp and pci devices.

Some motherboards allow the memory to run at a different speed in relation to the fsb usually + or - the pci bus speed or + or - 33mhz at a 133mhz fsb.

Click to expand...

i don't think anyone could have said it better

Check the below site for some good info: -

You don't just have CAS you also have RAS as well. Column Address Strobe and Row Address Strobe.

http://www.corsairmicro.com/main/techrgtb-index.html

Placid said:

CAS Latency (also referred to as latency) is the amount of time it takes for your memory to respond to a command. Specifically, it is the length of time between memory receiving a command to read data, and the first piece of data being output from memory. Latency is measured in terms of clock cycles and is often noted as CL2 (two clock cycles) or CL3 (three clock cycles).

CL2 is faster than CL3.

To overclock memory you need to change the speed it is running at not raise the voltage. Raising the voltage will often allow memory to run at a higher speed.

You change the memory speed by increasing the front side bus also called the fsb, doing this also increases the speed of every other device on the fsb including the cpu,agp and pci devices.

Some motherboards allow the memory to run at a different speed in relation to the fsb usually + or - the pci bus speed or + or - 33mhz at a 133mhz fsb.

Click to expand...

THAT is why you're a Senior Member and I'm not. =)