Crucial Ballistix Tracer 10600 vs G.Skill 12800

[gebbz]

I am looking to make my first build. I have spent nearly everyday since the i7 came out looking for the best price/performance/looks for my needs.

I have many questions but one I would like help with is my choice of memory.

I currently have some G.Skill 12800 DDR3 on my wish list but I have come across some very pretty Crucial memory. It is 5 dollars more (So basically the same price) and it says it is rated for PC3 10600 or 1333.

My question is this...Can the crucial mem also be OCed to 1600mhz? I have never OCed before and plan to only OC slightly without increasing voltage levels if I can. I know that the G.Skill can be set to 1600mhz without risk but I cannot find any current reviews of the Crucial Mem (there are old reviews covering similar mem but not this one specifically).

Should I just stick with the G.Skill? Or will the Crucial be able to be OCed to 1600mhz without much problems?

My wishlist build currently contains these items:

Intel i7 920
Foxconn FlamingBlade LGA 1366 Intel X58
OCZ OCZTXTCC2 XTC Cooler Rev 2 - Retail

 

[MaDMagik]

Why are you so fixed on this 1600? 1333 cas7 will offer pretty much the same performance as 1600 cas9, but since those crucial sticks(and f*ck, they do look awesome ;]) already require 1.65v chances of going much higher without relaxing the timings are quite small i think. On the other hand those g.skills need only 1.5v to run at 1600, and thats why I probably would go with those. Looks aint everything

Have a look here before you make your mind up: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=3589&p=1

 

[gebbz]

Huh. Well I really had no idea. I looked around and saw what I now realize were synthetic benchmarks showing 1600 to be faster than 1333. But I had no concept of CAS latency or real world application performance. Thanks a lot for the info and the link...even though this throws my whole world view on memory into whack and now I gotta look through newegg again

 

[gebbz]

just testing banner

 

[gebbz]

test