Memory question makes me not sleep at night

[Muscular Beaver]

guys I would like to hear your opinions...
Im going to build a high end rig with vapochill case, KR7A, XP 1900+ and radeon 8500. I have most parts here already except the memory and the vid card.
now heres my problem:
I want to get 1 gig of ram or at the very least 768 MB. but at the same time I would also like to get to at least 170 mhz FSB.
now the best thing I could do would be to buy 2 512MB sticks which can handle 170MHZ FSB, but well... I dont know any!
the second choice would be to get 3 256MB corsair, kingmax, etc PC2700 sticks, which I also dont know if they would actually run at 170 mhz FSB. I hear so many ppl saying that 1 stick of ram is best for high FSB and that 3 sticks would never hit even 150 mhz.
the third choice would be to buy just 2 sticks 256MB but that would be the very last thing I would do, just because I like to have a good amount of reserves.

so what should I do and which memory brand is sufficent for my needs? let me know your opinions, please.

[Placid]

Stick with 256mb sticks so if you find you can't run with 768mb at your desired speed you can easily take one out.
You won't find high speed 512mb sticks because they won't run at as high of a speed as 256mb because of the doubling of the chip density per bank.

I don't have the same motherboard as you but I can run 2x256 of kingmax 2700 to 175mhz on my board at cas 2 with 2.8v.

[iggybaseball]

Why do u want so much memory?

[Muscular Beaver]

Originally posted by iggybaseball
Why do u want so much memory?

as I said, because I like to have reserves.