OCing i875 Asus P4C-800 Deluxe, help!

Hi, i'm building myself a new computer soon. I bought the Asus P4C800 Deluxe MB. My questions are: Should I get Northwood or Prescott. I was leaning toward Northwood, cause Presc. has some heat dissipation problems, right? Anyway would the 1MB cache on the prescott make me benefit. The other thing I wanted to ask, what memory should I buy, PC4400 or just plain PC3200? I intend to overclock a bit, not too much. By the way I got the Zalman 7700 Cu CPU Fan.
help me out people, thanks for your attention, godspeed.

Well if you've got to have an 875 board I would sure go Northwood and PC4000 on the memory. Crucial Ballistix PC3200 might get you the best of both worlds when coupled with a 3.0C or a 3.2C. Some of the last 3.4C's are showing up too. That would be a good deal at the right price. I would NOT buy a socket 478 Prescott.

Abit IS7 - 3.0C @ 3.6ghz - Mushkin PC4000 (2 X 512) - Sapphire 9800Pro - TT 420 watt Pure Power
Samsung 120gb ATA-100 - Maxtor 40gb ATA - 100
Sony DRU-510A - Yellowtail Merlot

The first thing you need to do is go to the Motherboards website and look for the Memory Compatibility chart for your MOBO. I think they call it the QVL. Makesure that not only is the manufacture of the RAM that your considering on there but also the specific model. I really like Crucial myself.

<font color=red>Now that I have given up hope, I feel alot better</font color=red>

For graphic design, editing and especially RENDERING.. you do not want perfromance modules. You do not want to overclock the memory at all. Your concern is for reliability and stability. PC-3200 CL3 MAJOR ORIGINAL BRAND.

For this reason you want to buy the following:
Samsung, Micron or Infineon. ORIGINAL modules.

You can use as much as 2GB.

____________________________________________________
"Memory with lifetime warranty? So, whose lifetime is that?"
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I didnt notice until i read Brents remarks what you were doing with the computer. I dont know if I would Overclock either for your purposes. Why dont you tell us in a little more detail what you intend for this system. Is this going to be your income provider?

By your last sentence did you mean that the 2 choices that you have out of all the ones that you listed are G. Skill and Crucial? Also check out this article about populating RAM modules and see if it applies to you.<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=1839" target="_new">http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=1839</A>

<font color=red>Now that I have given up hope, I feel alot better</font color=red>

Hi there guys, I would like to thank you all again for your help.
The computer i'm building will be used for 2D and 3D graphic creation. I might once in a while run a game or two. But the comp is intended for quality and precision work outcome.
What I meant to say about the memory modules, is that from the QVL list from Asus, I would pick those two brands I named.
I do a lot of multi-tasking. Work with Photoshop, Freehand, Lightwave Modeler and Layout, (sometimes Dreamweaver and Flash), open at the same time, plus a few extra Firefox windows open. Would be more than 2 GB of RAM be unuseful in this case?
Thanks for the article from Anandtech, read it and found it useful to clear up some doubts i had.
Thanks again!! Cheers!

Could that be cause of the virtual memory it creates?... would it be different if i'd disable the virtual memory?
Anyways, thanks for the tip. I guess 2 GB of RAM is more than enough huh.