Need help deciding on ram to get for new comp

[revanrules]

Ok so, I'm going to be building my first computer in a couple weeks and I'm making some last minute adjustments on components. I intend to overclock an E6750 to 3.4GHz and use this computer mainly for gaming and school related stuff. The mobo I'm getting is the GIGABYTE GA-P35C-DS3R (http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16813128048). Newegg says that this mobo can take DDR2 memory at 1066/800/667 MHz. So at first I thought I'd get 2 GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800(PC2 6400 at a timing of 4-4-4-12 and a Cas Latency of 4). But recently I thought, hey the motherboard supports 1066, so why not? I've looked at the 2 GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) with a timing of 5-5-5-15 and a Cas Latency of 5. I've also looked at 2GB of Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) with the same timing and Cas latency.

So my questions are:
Will the difference in timings, Cas latency, and speed make a noticeable difference either in game or when i'm just doing school stuff? And is it worth spending the extra money for the DDR2 1066 ram as opposed to the DDR2 800 ram? I've got the money to spend, so cost doesn't matter too much unless its well over $200. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Also, on a somewhat related note, could anyone tell me whether or not Vista will recognize 4GB of system ram even if there is a bunch of video ram?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm offering it explicitly as "opinion," but you would find it on another thread also very active on this first page at the moment -- "DDR2 at 500+ Mhz 4-4-4-12 [which brand?]"

I don't need to be an expert to repeat what many of us have known for some time: the Micron D9 chips or "black-parts" as they've come to be known, offer the greatest over-clockability in Mhz but also the greatest "elasticity" range for tighter latencies at lower Mhz (and therefore faster memory or faster "bandwidth" in MB/sec.) Micron and Crucial are essentially the same company.

Your choice of the DDR2-800 Crucial kit(s) is, I think, a great choice. It took me a month or so of reviewing a lot of information, but I chose my DDR2-1000 Crucials based on my deductions-under-risk of performance expectations for tighter latencies at lower Mhz speeds, and it paid off.

Keep in mind that I made the final decision to buy those Crucials in March '07, and one gets very comfortable, -- too comfortable -- with the success of prior choices. But I doubt anyone here would dispute that these various speed-rated Crucial Ballistix are among the best. One fellow on the "CPU and OverClocking" forum said to me, when the topic came up in a thread where we've been posting Q6600 over-clock settings: "Yes, I have a set of those Crucials myself. Aren't they marvelous?"

In the DDR era, OCZ had some good modules, and there was (or is) a set of DDR-400 modules that were better than their own DDR-500's -- in a "Platinum enhanced latency" kit. They used Aeneon chips -- not the Microns, and you could set the latencies at 2,3,2,5 while running them up to DDR-450. The result was better than 2.5,4,4,7 @ DDR-500. But now, everyone is pooping on OCZ, which is why some of their Platinum line are being sold for $40 / GB. That's why I say it's easy to get comfortable with prior choices.

The DDR2-1000's seem to be hard to find now in the 2GB kit. You could either spring for flagship models rated at even higher speeds, or go with the DDR2-800s. On these latter, I just don't know have far down you can tighten the latencies as opposed to the DDR2-1000 modules. All I know about mine is that 3,3,3,6 @ DDR2-667 and 3,4,4,8 @ DDR2-720 gives me good bandwidth benchies, and those benchies are better than any DDR2-800 "native-mode" configurations in the Everest Ultimate benchmark database -- sometimes by as much as 1,000 MB/sec. Since I've added another GB to fill all four slots, though, I've had to loosen the command-rate to 2T and the motherboard does that automatically anyway. So I took a hit on the performance so that my "Read" bandwidth bench is only 600 MB/sec better than the best in that database. Of course, the database entries for such a piece of software would be dated by now, but it satisfies my "need for speed." Do you feel the need for speed?