DDR2 1066 worth the money?

I'm in the process of deciding on parts for my new watercooled pc. Question is, should I spend the money on the DDR2 1066 memory? Will I even see a difference compared to a good set of DDR2 800? My processor will be a Q6600 hoping to get 400Mhz x 9. Just looking for some input, thanks.

If it's not too much of a price jump, I think you will see a pretty decent performance increase with the quad. From what I hear they are very FSB hungry, and having ram that can keep up will help a lot.

projectrps13 said:

I'm in the process of deciding on parts for my new watercooled pc. Question is, should I spend the money on the DDR2 1066 memory? Will I even see a difference compared to a good set of DDR2 800? My processor will be a Q6600 hoping to get 400Mhz x 9. Just looking for some input, thanks.

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NOPE. Match your FSB and thats all you need. It isnt worth the meager 1-2% performance gain. Unless you get to swap your memory for free, then thats good. IMO - Match your FSB and tighten your timings. Extra money can go into the "future GFX card fund".

The C2D and C2Q architectures cannot saturate the 266Mhz FSB it comes with (stock). For example, I ran my Q6600 @ 266x9 (2.4) and 400x6 (2.4) and the performance increase in 3Dmark06 went from 11500 to 11750. Thats a 2% difference. I was deceived - the quad cores share the same FSB to Ram so I thought FSB increase would really be noticeable. But no. I do not recommend decreasing the FSB however. The internal clock of the CPU has a much bigger impact on performance.

-D

Ballistx ddr2 pc 8500 (1066) can be found for as little as 129, so you need to shop around.

ddr2 800 is all you need as with a 400mhz FSb you match the memory and have 3.6ghz (with a 9x Multi) which you would being going good to have on air, especially as you would have to bump up the volts a bit. Even with an unlinked memory/fsb ratio you will only see the difference in snythetic benchmarks a hardcore memory intensive programs.
Put the money from the 1066 memory towards an 8800GTS XD.

I would say get the Ballistix PC8500 like drotto25 mentioned.

Looks like the Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800 deal is gone for now...it'll probably be back in a day or 2.

But Corsair XMS2 for $64 AMIR can be had now. I think these are D9's...you may want to confirm first.

You won't notice any performance boost from running your RAM faster, and the DDR2-800 D9's will run at 1066 and faster speeds anyway. DDR2-1066 might give you slightly better timings at higher speeds, but again you won't notice the difference. Even benchmark scores will only go up by 1%...maybe. I gained a whopping 6 points in 3Dmark06 when I went from 900 4-4-4-6 to 1080 5-5-4-10. I'm using DDR2-800 Ballistix btw.

I see no reason to pay twice as much ($64 for DDR2-800 vs. $129 for DDR2-1066) when the "possible" performance increase is negligible.

Edit: How about these for $73 AMIR! Again, I'm not sure if they're D9's, but they claim to operate at 1T, and look awesome!

Thanks all for the advice. I decided to pick up a set of OCZ PC6400, stock timing at 4-4-4-15. I couldnt resist the deal, local fry's had one set left for $59 AR!!
Same as these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227231