MoBo & Memory Selected

well, faster memory would help in any overclocking attempt. The other option would be SIS 655 which does support faster memory.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

theoretically, the throughput from dual DDR266 is 4.2GB/s, which is exactly what the 533Mhz FSB of the P4 can take. So - <i>in theory</i> - an optimised controller of dual-channel DDR266 is all the P4 needs. In practice, extra bandwidth might offer you one or two percent more performance because of southbridge - northbridge - memory communication, though...

Look at Canterwood: the 800Mhz FSB can take 6.4GB/s of information, and dual DDR400 has a throughput of exactly 6.4GB/s. They match.

The one discrepancy, of course, would be SiS659, which is capable of 9.6GB/s (   ) with its quad-channel RDRAM configuration. In that case, the 800Mhz FSB is still only capable of 6.4GB/s... the performance remains to be seen. The whole thing makes me curious...

I want to say thank you for the information. I settled on the MSI Max-FISR with the SIS655 chipset and 1G of DDR400 memory. Will try it and see what happens. The chip is a P4 2.53.

I want to thank this board specially. Lurked around reading for a few months and when the time came, this site proved very helpful in narrowing down my choices.