Overclocking/Ram Question

[Surray]

Well, I've been looking around a lot lately about Socket 939, Athlon 64s with the Winchester core and overclocking those.
And everywhere I go I find people testing that stuff with DDR500 ram, or DDR533 ram.
Now I wonder, do you really have to overclock the ram with the FSB? Can't you just take PC3200 ram and run it at 200 mhz while putting the FSB at 250 for example?

Can you do that? If yes, why isn't it mentioned anywhere? Does it heavily reduce performance making the overclock useless?
I just want to know if I really have to buy 1024 mb of high performance memory for 200$ because I still have 1024mb of PC3200 samsung ram here.

 

[Crashman]

You can set lower memory ratios, and it does reduce performance.

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[Surray]

so if it reduces performance, by how much does it reduce performance?
Will running my ram at 200 mhz instead of 250 reduce my computer's speed by 20%, effectively making overclocking the CPU absolutely useless, or does it reduce performance by such a small amount that it's no problem?

 

[RichPLS]

Decreasing has more of a performance impact than increasing has due partly to scaling.

So a 20% decrease is more of a performance hit than a 20% increase has a performance boost.

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[Surray]

actually I said decreasing ram speed from 250 to 200 reduces performance by 20% taking 250 mhz as 100%, not 200 mhz, so there is no scaling.

And it's not like it matters, it's merely an example. I have no idea how much performance is unfluenced by the ram.

 

[Crashman]

I'd say you could probably split the difference and come up with a reasonable estimate of your performance gain.

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