Sanity check for prospective OC'er

[Sapiens]

Athlon 64 3500+ (90nm)
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold VX

Default - PC-3200 (400 MHz, 2-3-3-8, 2.6V): 11 x 200 = 2200 MHz
Overclocked - PC-4000 (500 MHz, 2-2-2-8, 3.3V): 9 x 250 = 2250 MHz

1.] The CAS latencies and voltages for the RAM are from OCZ's site. I'm assuming they're accurate. I'm also assuming that the default multiplier for the 3500+ is 11x200. Is this correct? If not, ignore the rest of my questions.
2.] Does the Neo2 Plat. support the 3.3V needed for the RAM at PC-4000 speeds?
3.] Is the proposed overclocking to synch the RAM and FSB reasonable (or at least correctly calculated)? 50 MHz seems like a pretty hefty jump, but I see people around here going much higher.
4.] What kind of adjustments, if any, would be needed to the core voltage? 3500+'s run at 1.4V do they not? I still need to do some more research on this, but a general range would be useful.
5.] What kind of cooling would be needed? I was thinking maybe a Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu. Am I missing something obvious? Is that a laughable cooling solution for what's proposed?

I realize that these may seem like silly questions (which I apologize for), but I'm looking at building a system with the above components in the next month or two -- if I can find a relatively safe way to take advantage of the RAM. If in fact I'm going in an utterly wrong direction here, I may look at OCZ's Platinum Rev. 2 instead. Thanks in advance for any help, suggestions, insight, etc. offered! 🙂

 

[n7]

I'm no pro, but i'll comment on one of your questions.

You generally don't need to buy expensive RAM for the A64s.
The best option is to get some good PC3200 value RAM with the tightest timings you can find. There's some 2-3-3 G. Skill for cheap on Newegg last i checked.

The you just set a divider so that the RAM runs asyncronously to the CPU. In actuality, RAM never runs a true 1:1 on A64s, but that's another story the experts can explain.

Check the stickied OCing guide in the CPU/Overclocking section for the dividers you could use.

 

[McArra]

K8N neo 2 is not the board for that memories, it can only give 2.85V. TCCD is the sweet mem for this board.

 

[Sapiens]

I was considering the OCZ PC-4000 after reading this AnandTech article. The performance benefit seemed noticeable enough to warrant interest, so I'm trying to explore the idea of using the RAM and overclocking.

Edit: Ahh, good to know McArra. *researches more*

 

[Sapiens]

Ah, looks like my suspicions were correct -- I'm going in the wrong direction for what I want. Looks like I'll stick with the MSI Neo2 Plat. but simply use the OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 at PC-3200/2-2-2-5/2.75V solution instead. Thanks for your help! 🙂

 

[akugami]

Uhh...Sapiens. You DID look at that Anandtech article closely right? Cross off the bottom two results in that chart because they included overclocked CPU's. What you'll see is that with the CPU at 2.4ghz and memory was overclocked from 200mhz to 266mhz, you get a whopping 5fps. It was 119.2fps at 200mhz (DDR400) and jumped to 124.8fps at 266mhz (DDR533). The last two blocks included CPU overclocks along with the memory overclocks. All that chart tells me is that I get about 2 to 2.5fps for every 33mhz overclock in RAM. So with RAM at 300mhz and CPU at the same speed, I'd get a whopping 7fps jump in the game Anandtech used.

The second to last result with 10x250 and RAM at DDR500 the system performed better than running the CPU at 2.4ghz and RAM at DDR533.

If you need more proof that RAM speeds don't help that much look at this article at Neoseeker.
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/athlon64oc/index.html

All it points out to me is that you're better off going with a higher speed CPU than higher speed RAM. While you'll get the best performance if you couple good RAM with high CPU speeds, if given a choice (for A64's at least), it's better to go with higher CPU speeds first and foremost.