In the year 2000.......DDR3 will.....

I'm working on building a new system, but I am new to over clocking and want some insight. I don't want to start out overclocking anything.....I want strong performance from stock speeds, but I want to be able to progress into overclocking when I'm ready. The system will be watercooled from the start so I want to over clock, I can.....but some newbie questions need to be answered first......

1) Can I over clock my processor without overclocking the ram? or do I need to do both?

2) Is DDR3 a form of memory standard or just overclocked DDR2 memory?

3) Are stock speeds of DDR3 worth the money in comparison to DDR2? or does DDR3 get its real performance from being overclocked?

Watercooling is far to expensive to be used in running your gear at stock speeds.


1. No and yes. (No) You overclock a processor by increasing the front side bus which is essentially overclocking your motherboard, but it changes both the processor speed and the ram speed. (Yes) You can remove the effects of increasing the front side buss by changing the memory divider. As Evilonigiri says, go read some guides for general information on overclocking.

2. DDR3 doesn't represent anything new in terms of function and is merely an upgrade in the chips on the PCB, DDR3 is a new standard, runs at lower voltages and will not fit in DDR2 slots.

3a. DDR3 is only now surpassing DDR2 in absolute latency. Example DDR3-2000mhz with 10-10-10-30 timings is the same speed as DDR2-1000mhz with 5-5-5-15 timings.

3b. It's not worth the money to buy DDR3. Some of the fastest overclocked DDR3 is now hitting DDR3-2000hmz at 8-7-7-22, so there is some performance gains to be had with DDR3, but as you can see it's a marginal gain (currently) with a heafty pricetag (currently). You can actually purchase the DDR2 memory in the above paragraph for less than 100, but the fastest DDR3 I mentioned in this paragraph costs over 500; both being 2x2gig sticks. Do you want to send an extra 400 for maybe 15-20% increase in memory speed? Some will pay now and others will wait for the price to drop.


On a side note most memory manufacturers have quit making the fastest of the DDR2 modules which they would rate up to DDR2-1200mhz, to concentrate on making DDR3 the new standard. IMO, it's just a way for intel to stay further ahead of AMD who builds the memory controller into it's CPUs making it harder for them to switch to the new DDR3 standard. In reality there is no voltage or engineering design which made it necessary to change the DIMM shape for DDR3. Except of course to buy a new mobo with an intel northbridge that supports DDR3.

Thanks for all the info...you've all confirmed what I was thinking.....Go DDR2....and a special thanks for getting the Conan reference...its my favorite skit by him.