Core i7 Bloomfield officially supports only DDR3 800 and 1066, no 1333

lol native quad, imc and 1066 memory


sounds familiar

Yeah, except performance which is yet to be seen...

Yes lets get 4GB of DDR2 800 and put it in a dual channel configurations on a older Core 2 chip and compare its performance with lets say even 3GB of DDR3 800 in a tri channel configuration with a IMC one the CPU. I think the 3GB of DDR3 800 will win because of two things. 1 the IMC boosts membroy bandwidth and 2 the tri channel configuration also boosts memory bandwidth.

Either way I don't see why people are so worried over the memory speed when the IMC will more than make up for a lower memory speed by adding much more memory bandwidth and also accessing the memory much faster.

^Thats my point. People don't seem to realize that no FSB means that memory speeds do not effect much. With AMDs Phenoms, if you move from 800MHz DDR2 to 1066MHz DDR2 you wont see as much of a benefit as you would with Intels Core 2 series. And the move to 1333MHz DDR2 for AMD is even less noticeable.

The only place higher clocked RAM will be effective for now is the server side where it can use the extra bandwidth that it would give.

But DDR3 1066 @ 8.5GB/s per channel in tri channel means you have 25.5GB/s worth of memory bandwidth and from some benchmarks I have seen Nehalem can get about 18.8GB of that memory bandwidth compared to a C2Q with DDR3 1333MHz in dual channel at only about 7-8GB of memory bandwidth.

Now why people cannot see that even with a lower memory speed you will benefit more from having a IMC being able to access the memory faster and the tri channel giving more bandwidth than ever before.

will the core i7 models work with ddr 2 ?

Well I would assume DDR3 prices would finally drop to be semi reasonable prices once the chip and the X58 boards launch, but thats wishful thinking.

Also.....dare I be lame and play the harp; with the current situation the economy is in, im not expecting prices to drop anytime soon. But who knows, even to this very day nobody knows how the economy works.

Actually I think its the other way around. I'm almost certain Phenom gains more from DDR2-1066 than Core 2, K8 definitely gained more from faster memory than Core 2 also, its not about the bandwith (its already overkill) but rather the lower overall latency with higher speed RAM.