Is it possible to clock PD ram to the max Athlon II x2 speed?

[ravenhq]

Ok, I'm building a new system to beat the Diablo3 and GuildWars2 release dates, which unfortunately will be released a month or three before Trinity.

So my plan is to build a AM3+ system with a cheap Athlon II x2 and DDR3 1866ram and a decent videocard. Then in early 2013, I'll switch out the CPU with a Piledriver Octocore (hoping the PD will be better than BD and PII). The problem is that I read that the faster ram will automatically underclock to 667mhz on the Athlon II x2.

The questions are:

1) Can I manually clock the ram to 1333 on any motherboard? (Athlon supports up to 1333ram)
2) Does my plan sound idiotic in anyway? (Is the prevailing opinion that the PD Octo will be better than BD Octo and much more cost effective than going Intel for the equivalent power?)

BTW, I'm sorry if my question is in the wrong board, it was eiter MB+Ram or CPU boards and my question covers both. Thank you!

 

[jimmysmitty]

There is no real information on PD right now to give a clear answer. It could clock higher or perform better than BD but it would need to perform quite a bit better to beat the 2500K/2600K (current Intel CPUs) in performance and be priced either the same or lower than it.

Honestly I think its a waste of money to buy a CPU to wait for a new one when you could just take the extra money from said Athlon II and put it towards a GPU or better CPU now. Either get a Phenom II X6 or buy a 2500K system.

There is no release date for PD other than rumors for Q2/Q3. If its Q3, you will be waiting a while an GW2 and D3 will launch before it is out.

As for the RAM, honestly, 1866MHz RAM is a waste. 1600MHz is the best option as its cheap and will do what you need. Not sure why anyone other than someone using a Llano based system, that can benefit from the faster RAM on the IGP side, buys that RAM.

Games will not benefit from 1866MHz RAM nor really that much from even 1600MHz RAM. Only applications that utilize memory or servers benefit from faster RAM.

To answer your question, the RAM is clocked to DDR3 1333. Its just that it will show 667MHz that when in dual channel will be DDR3 1333MHz.

For example, I have 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz Corsair Vengance RAM. In CPUx, the memory screen shows it at 800MHz but its clocked at 1600MHz in dual channel.

 

[ravenhq]

Best answer selected by RavenHQ.