newbie's question: overclock memory, but not CPU

Hi,

I plan to build a new pc with core i7-920.
Can I set QPI to 6.4(not 4.8) or set memory to 1600(not 1066) but keep the CPU on stock speed?
Any motherboard allow me to only overclock memory?

Thanks a lot.

reduce the multiplier and increase the FSB.

Silly

CPU sync is completely different with the Core i7 - there is no FSB, nor is there anything to synchronize. The memory is controlled directly from the CPU, with no intervening path. The performance will increase with the memory clock, but only on applications that are memory bandwidth limited, which are quite rare among normal desktop apps.

Yep

Of course, considering that even with tri channel DDR3-1066, it will have at least double the bandwidth of the fastest Core 2 system, I fail to see why memory overclocking would really be needed on a stock 920.

The early reviews I read said there are only two available memory multipliers for non extreme models, 6 and 8. with base clock of 133MHz that works out as 800 and 1066. So you'll need to increase the base clock to OC the memory and if you don't lower the multi on the cpu and/or QPI link they will be oveclocked as well.