FSB and Memory Speed Confusion

[heavymetalsmith]

So I've been reading through the forum for memory as well as checking out reviews and I've gotten a little confused. I've heard several people say that DDR2 800 memory is a good buy when it matches the FSB speed of the motherboard/processor combination you choose. So the processor I picked has a 1333FSB and the motherboard has 1600/1333 FSB. According to the somewhat confusing quote below and some reading I did online I sort of get this understanding.

Mobo 1600FSB / 4 (Quad Pump Bus) = 400MHz
DDR2 800 / 2 (Dual Data Rate) = 400 Mhz

So in this situationthe mobo and DDR2 with a nice 1.8 voltage would be best for overclocking and matching FSB speeds I think? So what of the processor?

CPU 1333FSB / 4 (Quad Pump Bus) = 333.25 Mhz

So the ram/mobo fsb to pair with this is 667 MHz (666 would of been nicer, the evil ram!)?

Now the reason I am confused about this is that the only CPU from Intel that operate at this FSB cost the same as a black market kidney (I only have one left.). So if I was interested in a system for overclocking with the general components I have listed below how should I proceed? Get DDR 800 and overclock the FSB on the processor to 1600 (if that's possible)? Any suggestion on memory and how I should proceed would be appreciated.



Build Specifications:
Component...........Chipset.....Man...........Model............ Price
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case...................N/A........... Antec........1200...............179.99
Graphics Card.......ATI ............Saphire......4870x2...........559.99
Motherboard.........Intel X48.....Gigabyte....GA-X48-DS4....224.99
CPU....................Wolfdale......Intel..........E8500............189.99

"best" overclocking happens when you sync your ram to the FSB, and overclock it. Nearly every Intel board out there right now can hit 400MHz FSB pretty easily. Seeing as your ram is DDR, thats 800MHz. In this case, your 1066MHz ram will be underclocked. If you choose to stop there, your 1066MHz ram MIGHT not volt down to 1.8v.

Edit: Fixed stupid table.

 

[br3nd064]

If you're interested in overclocking, get DDR2 800mhz ram (preferably with lower timings). Yes, 1600mhz FSB is possible. I can't speak for a X48 chipset, but I have a 780i and an E8500, and I easily got it running at 1600mhz FSB.

In my opinion, ram timings are more important than bandwidth, so I left mine at 800mhz, but lowered the timings to 4-4-4-12.

Hope that helps.