Corsair Announces Low Latency CAS4 Sodimm For Macs

The whitepapers show a significant amount of performance gain, up to 20%. This memory is rated at 4-4-4-12@667MHz. View it here at Corsair's Forum:

http://www.asktheramguy.com/v3/showthread.php?t=67565

This part has been tested 100% compatible on Intel based iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

There is already laptop memory available with a CAS 4 rating. Not too expensive either, $45 for a 2GB stick or $49 for two 1GB sticks.

Cool can you provide me the make and model so I can compare the performance?

20% gains?

no way, not gonna happen.

If you view the whitepapers: http://www.asktheramguy.com/upload/Low%20Latency%20Mac%20Memory%20Performance.pdf

Test#2 you can save up to 20% in time compared to the standard RAM that came with the MacBook Pro 2.16Ghz 15".

That 20% increase in performance is due to the fact they're comparing a 1GB setup to a 4GB setup.
The numbers look nice but they're not 20%, 10% sure.

When searching on Newegg, G.Skill pops up for laptop memory with a CAS 4 rating.

The numbers show the increase vs a standard CAS5 4GB memory as well, so in no way is the document attempting to mislead users. The fact is, there are no downsides vs other Brands of memory only upward. If there are any test you are curious about let me know. I'm making a trip to Apple Compatability Labs this Friday. We(Corsair) have spent countless hours at ADC(Apple Developers Connection)Lab at Cupertino, CA engineering this product.

True GSkill does have a CAS4 Sodimm, but this product and like all other Corsair engineered Apple specified Memory have been tested at ADC Labs with Apple's Memory Validation Test. Therefore 100% tested for compatibility and reliability.

uh-huh, so RAM you make specifically for Apple products differers from PC RAM?
How is a 2GB PC5300 SO-DIMM different between the PC version and the Mac?

Besides the usual disclosed 4-4-4-12 or 5-5-5-15 timings there are sub-timings in the SPD. This low latency part's sub timings have been tweaked for maximum performance for Mac. So I can assure you our CAS4 RAM will differ in performance from others CAS4 RAM. Also some memory may pass standard memory test like Memtest86 and RST Pro but we have found that it may fail Apple's Memory Validation Test. That is why we have standard RAM and Apple specific RAM.

Perhaps people are a little confused. Low latency yields greater performance, that much not many here might know. However, the benefits of the "sub timings" are only noticeable in memory benchmarks. The average person cannot detect a tangible performance increase with those minor improvements. Also, due to the hardware limitations of notebook computers, most notably the slower hard drives and lower bus speeds, you only notice memory improvements in the Mac Pro, where such bottlenecks are not an issue.

So while your benchmarks may show a performance increase, it won't be noticed by anybody using an Apple laptop. There's nothing extra special about the Corsair modules just because they happened to pass a more vigorous benchmark.

Right, I mean what is the Apple Validation Test? Is it a list of modules that have done though the ADC. Those that haven't been "tested" fail and those that did the tests at Apple Labs pass?
Unfortunately, the Mac Pro won't see lower latency modules from my knowledge. Because it uses server RAM, the error checking slows down the latency. But that's true, more perfomance gains will be seen swapping out a 7200 RPM drive over the standard 5400RPM than compared to lower latency RAM.

This module is not intended for Mac Pros. Only iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pros...

We never said it was intended for the Mac Pro. Low latency RAM would be most noticed in the Mac Pro.

I don't know how much these modules will be priced at places like Newegg.com but with a Corsair MSRP of $160 I certainly wouldn't buy them over standard CAS 4 2x2GB kits which can be had for around half that. The small performance boost from the "MAC optimized" Corsair RAM would be nice, especially for guaranteed compatibility and no issues in a MAC but Corsair will have to drop the price before they become of any real interest to most MBP owners.

As a long time gamer, which naturally led to building my own systems and overclocking for a number of years, I have been a long time fan of Corsair. There are many of us hardware enthusiasts that looked (and still do) to Corsair first for our memory needs.

As always with Corsair, it's nice to see that you guys do it right once you decide to do a thing.

Having said that, as you can see from the posts above, this is going to be a hard sell for Corsair. As one that has gladly paid $300+ for RAM when there was perfectly good stuff available for under $100, that's not the type of expenditure I can recommend to the average computer user.

While the CS3 and compression tests are fairly impressive - you're going to have to show tests vs the other available CAS 4 modules. While I would recommend Corsair over g-skill, and wouldn't even mind paying a premium, don't know that I could recommend $160 vs $90.

Even amongst the hardware enthusiasts that have only recently 'discovered' OS X, it doesn't seem to take long for a no tweak, it works, leave it alone attitude to develop. Just as an example, I have a P4 3.4 o/c'd to 3.9 that blows away my MBP 2.33 C2D when it comes to encoding video. But do I use it? Extremely rare...

While I am glad Apple must be selling enough computers for Corsair to take the R&D time for this, I can't see a 60-80% premium being a big seller amongst the Apple population. There just does not exist the same type of hardware enthusiast population here as there is in the Win domain.

Corsair 4GB CAS4 $112-115

Amazon has the Corsair 4GB CAS4 for $112 and Buy.com has it for $115.

I just picked up a 15" MBP, 2.4GHz (previous model with Merom, not Penryn, which Amazon is selling for $1685=1835-150rebate, I just couldn't pass up this deal). Not sure yet if I need to increase my 2GB up to 4GB, but if I do, I'll probably pick this memory up and give it a try.

Is anyone else bothered by the idea that this thread started as spam more or less? Someone making a post to solicit their product to sell.

I don't remember a link to buy the RAM though.
It seems like a valid thread to me. I mean, it'd be hard to call it spam if someone randomly found the data sheets and posted the links.