Budget Constraints

Well for the third time I have had to re-budget my next system. Seems I need a new truck more . Anyway with my current but old P4 I oc'd a 2.4 up to 3.31 on Value RAM. Can I buy a 6GB kit of Value DDR3 RAM and oc a i7 920 up over 3.0? I only plan to game with this system and watch TV shows from Hulu and thats about it.

Almost forgot, can I do 3.0 with 1333 instead of 1600?

3.0ghz on a i7 should be pretty easy to obtain, even with value ram. I'm not sure entirely if you'll be safe with 1333 but I'm sure someone else could chime in about that

Very few 920's can't get over 3.5ghz. 3.0 should be a walk in the park.

I don't know about ram though, never worked with a 1366 board so i have no idea what the dividers are like. Seems like 1333 should work fine though.

Not sure if Bob meant can get over instead of can't as I havent seen one not able to get to 3.5 yet..

Anyways, i dont think the value ram should give you much trouble as long as its matched correctly..even at CAS9 you're still getting the benefits of tri-channel and may not even hit the exact 1333 speeds.. i have 1600 thats only running around 1300ish (my fault, but still)

The closest you can get to 1333MHz DRAM frequency at 3.0GHz (150MHz BCLK) without going over is 1200MHz (2:8 FSB : DRAM ratio). Using a 10x DRAM multiplier (2:10 ratio) the resulting DRAM frequency would be 1500MHz. In order to hit 1333MHz (1328MHz to be exact; 2:8 DRAM ratio) DRAM frequency you would need to increase the BCLK to 166MHz, resulting in a 3.32GHz clock. If you were to loosen the SPD timings of the DDR3-1333MHz (for example from 8-8-8-24 to 9-9-9-24), it should easily hit 1500MHz and upwards of 1600MHz or higher.

Yup value ram (1333Mhz) would work fine and OCing it to 3.0Ghz or even 3.3Ghz... you could probably lower its default voltage and still obtain the clocks. Like mine Im running my 920 below default voltage yet it OC's still like a dream

Thanks Guys