Overclocking w/ DDR400

I have very little experience in the world of overclocking, just to prove a point, I just figured out that if you increase your chipset frequency, your memory frequency also rises. I have Corsair XMS DDR400 and I want to increase the clock on my Athlon 64 X2 4800. I don't think I can really overclock my memory that much, but maybe I'm wrong.

How can I get around this problem and still be able to overclock without destroying my memory? Thanks.

For better responses please provide your motherboard info, cooling (stock or aftermarket) and your ram's version number so that the chips it uses can be identified. Also provide the stock/default timings for your modules.

You really won't have any problems overclocking your system...just use the memory dividers and keep the ram at or near default if it becomes a limiting point for you.

Here are a couple of articles that you might find interesting.

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/athlon64oc/index.html

http://www.insanetek.com/review.php?id=10

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=325

All of those articles discuss to some extent overclocking using the dividers and ram that would not be considered the high-end DDR600 stuff.

Read these and come back with your specific questions and I'm sure that you'll get all the answers you need.

I have an Asus A8N-E running the latest BIOS with an Athlon 64 X2 4800 processor. The memory is Corsair XMS DDR400 with 2-2-2-5 latency. I'm not sure which revision it is, but I bought them from Newegg back in July if that helps at all. At the moment I'm using stock cooling on everything, but I'll be switching to water cooling this week when my parts get here, once I have water cooling on, I plan to start overclocking.

One other question I thought of is how to weigh latency vs. clock speed. I was thinking about getting rid of the DDR400 and getting some 550 or 600. However, with the increase in speed, I have to worry about latency more. I have 2-2-2-5 latency with the set-up I have now, but with the 600 I'll have to go down to something like 3-4-4-10. Which would be better, the 600 3-4-4-10 or the 400 2-2-2-5?

And which is better in my case too:

DDR 400 oc'd to:

234 @ 2.5/3/2/5

or
DDR500 Oc'd to:

270 3/4/4/8 (running 1:1 cpu/mem ratio)