Is it true that if you buy 1000mhz+ RAM..

[urik]

Is it true that if you buy 1000mhz+ RAM it will be lowered down to 800mhz if the mother board only supports 533/667/800? I was told this and it does not make sence because i,ve never seen a motherboard that supports more than 533/667/800 RAM, so meaning that 1000mhz+ ram would be pointless? Thanks.

[Enablingwolf]

When overclocking, you run out of specs. So the overhead the faster RAM has, gives you benefits.

My PC3200 RAM can go upwards of 240(stock is 200) or so. Which the board and RAM should only be at around 200 stock. It is much nicer having that headroom to go and not hit limits on the RAM.

On an even older system I had. The board supported up to PC2100. Though I ran PC2700. I had plenty of headroom over supported RAM and got killer overclocks out of the setup. I kicked up the FSB, and let it loose. Without hitting the limits of the RAM before the board and CPU could not take anymore. Without the faster RAM i would of been held back by the RAM. Since I also had PC3200, which came out much later on. I tried that for faster speeds, without any higher overclocks. The PC2700 had everything I needed.

Another benefit of faster then stock speed RAM. You can keep tighter RAM timings and not have to loosen them up, if at all.

[Yellowbeard XMS]

Some of the newer boards are offering options in the bios to run faster than DDR800. Your best real world gains will be with OCing the CPU and the memory synchronously so not everyone will be able to take full advantage of RAM faster than DDR800, depending on how well their board and CPU will OC.