Does memory speed determine how fast information is read or written to it?

Question

or how fast it is accessed? Also, does using memory with lower latencies always increase system performance? or can memory operate faster than the processor at times so that latencies won't matter because the memory finishes before the processor?

Answer 1

Yes, memory speed matters for both reading and writing. Lower latency USUALLY means it will perform better/faster, but there may times when it doesn't. Speeds are always bottlenecked and reducing latencies will only matter if the RAM can handle it...some RAM can only be reduced so far, while others, such as Corsair, can handle a 1-1-1 latency setting.

As for the processor, you can't really compare processor speeds to RAM speed. If you have an extremely slow processor and super quick RAM, then I suppose your speeds are limited by the processor, but they're kinda doing separate things. Also, with L1, L2, and L3 cache in the processor, it doesn't even compare to even the fastest RAM available. Cache RAM in the processor is absurdly faster than RAM, so more often than not, a processor will be waiting on RAM, not vice versa.

Answer 2

Front side bus speeds are more important than CPU or memory latency, when it comes to data access.. Also, memory speeds, unless very far apart, are really not going to be that noticeable, unless you are doing some hardcore 3D graphic modeling, and even then it is going to be hard to tell the difference unless you're running a very detailed benchmarking program.

Answer 3

No! Actually its data and adress bus size thzt determine this!