1066mhz Ram Vs 800mhz Ram?

[25GTT]

Hey all,

time for another whacky 25GTT question thread....

this time its about the amazing world of RAM.

OK so this is my system:

My setup?

Case:Coolermaster Centurion 5

Motherboard: Gigabyte EP35-DS3

CPU & CPU Cooler: E8400 clocked just a bit to 3.3 ghz running a xigmatek cooler and managed by a schweeet zalman LCD fan and PSU controller, very blingy but lets me control everything!

RAM: 4gb 800mhz ram (kingston i think), do you think its worth going the 1066mhz or not worth it??

Monitor: 22 asus splendid monitor

Graphics Card:Ge force galaxy 9800GTX 512MB (might need to go a 4870 soon?)

HDD(s):2 yummy 500GB HDD's running in raid format so 1TB in total (600GB still left to go)

Recently i have seen 4GB worth of Kingston Hyper 1066 mhz RAM for $90 shown below:

http://www.ple.com.au/?p=snapshot&inventory_id=37851

So my question is for performance is there an advantage in going the 1066mhz? the guy at PLE said go for a more high performance 800mhz RAM for future clocking at the moment my cpu is clocked from 3ghz to 3.3 i doubt i will ever take higher than 3.6 ghz on the E8400 chip. so would the kingstone RAM be suffice? i thought the 1066mhz would be better but the guy at the shop said the 800mhz offers less latency so better for gaming?

There also is this kit which is pretty high end for RAM:

http://www.ple.com.au/?p=snapshot&inventory_id=33701

what would you recommend? is there a huge difference in me getting 1066mhz?

Also currently i have 4 x 1gb sticks, is there a performance increase in going 2 x 2 GB sticks?

So many questions such little time :-)

Thanks all!

Edited January 7, 2009 by 25GTT

[R31Nismoid]

only real advantage is if you're going to overclock hard with the ram @ 1:1 ratio

for 3.2ghz 800 is perfectly fine, even probably closer to 3.8ghz @ 1:1

much more and you need the 1066 for the extra headroom for easy clocks (like i have @ 4.3) as the timings are much more friendly... but you can make 1066 ram run @ the 800 timings... so the dude in the shop is a bit wrong there IMO.

Better off with 2x2 sticks

End of the day, you wont really notice a difference gaming or otherwise for the general user with 800 or 1066. The differences are that small it doesnt matter

[pkblade]

The timings on that Kingston Hyper X are somewhat loose (1066mhz @ 7-7-7-20)…it would be more ideal to spend a little extra (but not Corsair extra) to have CL5 timings (ie. 5-5-5-15 / 18) at that frequency.

Given that you don't intend to O/C much over 3.6ghz (400x9), then 800mhz (or 1066 @ 800mhz) preferably with CL4 timings would be perfect. As long as your current memory is stable, there won’t be a big performance difference going from 4 to 2 new sticks, except slightly less stress on the memory controller and lower voltage drawn with the 2 sticks.