At 18:49 05/19/01, Demetri Kolokotronis wrote:
>Hyundai RAM readout states, "CL3 upto 133MHz, CL2 upto 100MHz".
>What are CL3, CL2?

CL3 and CL2 are pronounced "clock three" and "clock two".
The concept here is technically called CAS Latency [*].

Simply put, it's the number of clock cycles that pass
between when memory first receives a command for data to
be read until the first piece of data is output from memory.

CL2 memory takes 2 clock cycles from when the memory is
ordered to output data until when the data is sent out.
CL3 would take 3 clock cycles to do the same thing.

If your computer has a front side bus speed of 100 MHz.,
there are one hundred million clock cycles each second.
In this example, a clock cycle would last 10 nanoseconds.

Performance wise, CL2 memory processes data a little quicker
than CL3 memory in that you have to wait one less clock
cycle for the initial data. However, after the first piece
of data is processed, the rest of the data is processed at
equal speeds. Latency only affects the initial burst of data.
Once data starts flowing, there is no difference in
performance between CL2 and CL3.

Going from CL2 memory to CL3 memory might improve memory
performance 10% or 20%, but memory performance is only a
part of overall system performance. (That 20% increase might
only translate to a 2% or 3% increase in system performance
and you probably wouldn't perceive this difference unless you
run benchmark programs to measure performance.) These
numbers are off the cuff examples only.

[*] The CAS in CAS Latency stands for Column Access Strobe.
There is also a RAS Latency where RAS stands for Row Access
Strobe.

Regards,
Bill

               The NOSPIN Group Promotions is now offering
              Mandrake Linux or Red Hat Linux CD sets along
         with our NOSPIN Power Linux CD...  at a great price!!!
             http://freepctech.com/goodies/promotions.shtml