Within the last few months i'd say i've become fairly decent at overclocking and understanding the requirments for overclockable mobo's and cpu's. I understand about the link between CPU and RAM etc...

1: However, what makes RAM more overclockable other than a brand name and frquencies? i.e CPU's have the GO or F3 stepping ideally.

2: Is any more than 2Gig going to be a noticable difference? i.e like the jump from 512mb to 1gig.

What provoked this thought was my system atm. I knew AMD's run with a higher multi so getting away with a 1:1 ratio was fine, because the FSB changes in o/cing are much lower. But since getting 3500Mhz (14*250) i found my OCZ DDR2 800 RAM wouldn't handle a 1:1 50Mhz FSB increase which as far as i know is poor especially with a 0.2 overvoltage .

Any help to fix my curiosity?

The manufactured quality of the ram makes the difference. For example, any Micron D8GMH or D9GCT, etc, are about the best DDR2 ram chips on the market, and any manufacturer who uses those chips will have the best quality ram.

Typically, you will find a lot of different manufacturers cross-purchasing to get different types of ram chips for use on their products.

A processor or motherboard won't make your ram overclock any better. Either you have good ram or bad ram. The motherboard will either will or won't allow you to get the maximum overclock potential out of your ram.

If you are using Windows XP, then 2GB is about the optimal amount of memory. Any more won't gain much better performance, and could in fact slow you down.

If you are using Vista, then use as much as you can, as Vista is a resource hog. If you have 4 GB, and are using Vista 32-bit, you will only utilize about 3.3 GB of it, as 32-bit is limited to a maximum of 4GB addressable memory locations. Video is allocated up to 768 MB, so it leaves roughly 3.3 GB left for regular....

If you are using Vista 64-bit, then you can use all the ram.

Overclocking with more than 2 GB tends to force you to use looser timings on your ram, thereby making it more difficult to reach max OC headroom. It's a trade-off...

Thankyou for the info. That pretty much was the perfect answer i wasn't expecting . I use Vista 64 so would be looking at the more than 2GB option.

You say anymore than 2GB tends to make o/c'ing more difficult, is that the same if you only use 2X 2GB sticks of 6400 C5. I've heard that if you use all of your ram slots it limits your overclocking potential, but having more than 2GB limiting your o/c is something new again (obviously as you've just told me ).

You will have better luck overclocking 2x2gb than 4x1gb.