Sorry for being a n00b in this matter, but I am confused as to which is best...
My 'old' set-up had 1 Gb RAM, settings at 4/4/4/12, and I forget what Vista gave it, but my new box has 2Gb of matched RAM with settings of 5/5/5/18, and Vista gives it a '5.0'
Seeing as ALL my other scores are at 5.9/5.8, I was wondering if these latency settings are better or worse?
Can anybody explain latency timings to me in plain 'easy-to-understand-by-a-thick-shit' English please?

Your RAM is like an information train - the MHz is the speed of the train, the timings are how fast information gets on/off.

Lower Timings are better, and each number means something.

The First number is the CAS Latency, this is the most important, this says how long the memory must wait before accessing the next set of data.

The next series of timings are to do with how long it takes to swap rows/columns and how long it takes to find the information in these rows/columns.

These latency settings are worse, but latency doesn't mean that much on Intel systems, however on AMD systems it's arguably more important than MHz.

Forget Vista's performance scores though - they're crap. My GFX card scores between 5.6 and 5.9 depending on the time of day.

If you care, i've found that my Ballistix (DDR800, 4-4-4-12) were only getting a 5.6, however when i upped the speed to DDR1000 @ 5-5-5-15 i found then it hit 5.9 (Which is the highest score it allows).

In simple terms: 5.0 for a CL5 ram sounds about right. My CL5 only scores 4.9 as well. For gaming in general you want lower timing. So CL3 or CL4

Good luck finding cheap DDR2 CL3 RAM (Afaik only Team and Mushkin make them, and they are over £120).

For general gaming you can't set a precident - AMD's seem to like nice, tight timings, whereas Intel systems rather a higher MHz than than tighter timings.

My old memory was CL3 and not that expensive; it was only 667MHz stuff though. I've upgraded to 800MHz sticks now and couldn't even find CL3 memory for that clock rate so bought CL4 instead.

I'm unsure what to think of DDR3 since I think stock timings are CL9?

If you track memory, were going down the route of lower voltages, higher speeds and higher timings, if you look at the various types...

DDR1 - Max=DDR500 (250 MHz), timings in the CAS 2 (RARE), 2.5 and 3+ ranges.
DDR2 - Max=DDR1200 (600 MHz), timings in the CAS 3 (RARE), 4 and 5 ranges
DDR3 - Max=DDR1600 (800 MHz), timings in the CAS 9 range

IMO DDR3 should be able to hit DDR2000, however i think we'll see timings becoe less and less important...

@ Bob - the only memory i know of that's CL3 (until now) was DDR800 Mushkin stuff, which was really expensive. I'm fairly sure that D9 memory (D9's are very nice chips on the memory - good for overclocking - some Team memory use them, Ballistix usually use them, as do a few others - usually marketed for overclockability) will run at CAS3, although probably only at stock speeds

^It usually depends on how much voltage you want to put in it at stock voltage. 2v won't give you 3-3-3-9 at 800mhz... But usually 2.2 will do the trick, sometimes 2.3

PS, how good are OCZ stock lately, their Gold XTC and Platinum XTC series looks pretty promising for 1000mhz at decent timings...
~Bryan~