Worth sacrificing some MHz for tighter timings?

I'm currently working my way up through my overclock while trying to maintain some tighter ram timings. I'm using some G.Skill Pi PC-8500 DDR2 rated at 5-5-5-15 @ 2.1v.

Currently I am stress testing at 3.4 GHz (17x200) with my ram running at 1066 MHz unganged with the 5-5-5-15 timings. The highest overclock I have so far been able to get stable was 3636 (18x202), but the timings were loose (set timings to auto) so I was wondering, is it worth trimming some MHz off of the CPU speed in order to get tighter timings?

I'd rather go for the clock speed these days. Those timings doesn't give a lot of difference except good numbers in benches. With that, we need to put in more voltage and that results in more power and heat.

naw loosen those timings and clock everything up.... i mean you dont want super loose, and just run the ram at 1:1, but cpu speed is gonna do alot more than ram timings

He is running AMD.

Yes, AMD does very well with tighter timings, over mem speed. You should not have to sacrifice any CPU speed though, just drop your mem divider, and up the HTREF to equal your current CPU speed.

800 Mem divider and 250HT REF will put you right back at 1000MHz Mem speed. Not sure how tight you intend to run on the mem. I am hoping to try out some experiments with 4-4-4 800 vs 5-5-5 1000 in a week or so. My money is on 4-4-4 800 right now

I went and changed to 3.5 GHz @ 17.5x200 and things seem to be pretty stable. I left the ram at 1066 and all of the same really tight timings and I haven't had any issues so far. I tried pushing those timings at 18x200 before and had no luck.

What do you consider too loose? here are the "loose" timings my system was running at auto:

(Timing - LOOSE - CURRENT)
Memory Clock - x5.33 (1066) - x5.33 (1066)
DCTs Mode - Unganged - Unganged
CAS# Latency - 5T - 5T
Ras to CAS R/W Delay - 7T - 5T
Row Precharge Time - 7T - 5T
Minimum RAS Active Time - 20T - 15T
1T/2T Command Timing - 2T - 2T
TwTr Command Delay - 4T - 4T
TrFc0 for DIMM1 - 75ns (nothing installed) - 75ns
TrFc2 for DIMM2 - 75ns (nothing installed) - 75ns
TrFc1 for DIMM3 - 127.5ns - 127.5ns
TrFc3 for DIMM4 - 127.5ns - 127.5ns
Write Recovery Time - 8T - 6T
Precharge Time - 3T - 3T
Row Cycle Time - 33T - 25T
RAS to RAS Delay - 5T - 4T

Too loose? Not loose enough? Suggestions?

Someone suggested that I try 16x225 at x4.00 (800) but that caused my system to get POST errors (which I have never seen before). I haven't tried that again since flashing the bios though.

Well, I made it into windows at this:



Was it stable? Oh yeah!!! As long as you consider 5 seconds of prime95 action stable!

I had to increase the cpu to 1.5v, CPU-NB to 1.325v and Northbridge to 1.3v to get this far. Also, I set my ram timings to as loose as it would let me and at 800 MHz