4Gb of DDR2-800 @ 4-4-4-12 faces off against 4Gb clocked to DDR2-1,066MHz @ 5-5-5-15 at bit-tech.  Many of us still haven’t made the plunge into DDR3, especially with Nehalem looming in the near future and it’s triple channel capabilities.  If you are looking for extra speed in your DDR2 system, it’s worth revisiting the differences you get in changing timing and overall speed.

“We found that using the biggest performance difference for the popular P45 chipset was actually tRD – a chipset limitation, not memory. On the Gigabyte board this is the “Performance Enhance” option that can be changed between Standard, Turbo or Extreme – either this or adjusting precisely in the Advanced Timing Control section will greatly affect performance. Dropping down the performance level from Turbo to Standard with the 1,066MHz memory saw the performance drop significantly to sub-800MHz CAS-4 levels, effectively nullifying any point in buying and using faster memory settings. In this case, if you’re under a strict budget, we’d highly recommend buying a better motherboard and cheaper memory – substituting more expensive PC2-8500 memory for these G.Skill Pi-Blacks.”

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