Help me clear up (in my mind) the AT 2GB memory article.

[bupkus]

I went for the Twinx2048-3200c2pt because of the lower timings and $197 AMIR price. I haven't researched this much lately, but I recall PC3200 with tight timings getting the nod from the enthusiast community for the Athlon 64.
The TWINX2048-4000PT that I faced it off to lists timings of 3-4-4-8 which I thought wasn't preferable to the tighter timings especially with a price of $233.
The OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K is going for the same price of about $200 but the OCZ5001024EBPE which shared the editors choice only appears on newegg as a single 1GB module for $153.44 + $4.81 shipping.
That's too rich for my blood as is, I believe, Mushkin's Redline.
I guess the question for me would be which is the best for $200 +- $20?

 

[Ricemarine]

Question is, are you overclocking or not?

G.Skill is like that... Crucial PC4000 Tracer's pwn them all, so if you can afford em, oh wow.

 

[bupkus]

When I overclocked my Athlon XP I knew not to expect to go beyond a 200MHz on my LOCKED Barton or my nForce2 chipset, so synchronizing both memory and the fsb was pretty simple.
Now with my Venice 3000+ I ran some cheap memory and OC'd the CPU frequency at 256MHz forcing the cpu to 2.3GHz. Although my cheap memory listed an STP of:
1) PC2700 and
2) PC3200
they seemed to both be running at PC3200 speeds at 2.5-3-3-7 timings as listed by CPU-Z.

PC3200 dictates a 200MHz clock against a cpu bus clock of 256MHz. I am told this is of no consequence with AMD's memory controllers set inside these new processors so I don't think I need to concern myself with raising the memory's clock. However, although there is no heavy penalty for nonsynchronization there remains now this simple question. Of what benefit and under what circumstances does one benefit from trading tight timings for a higher memory clock?
Also, why have I been reading about A64s that benefit most form CAS 2 PC3200?