LGA775 w/DDR3 DDR2200/DDR1600

[knowom]

These 3 motherboards for LGA775 can support fast DDR3 1600 on the ASRock or DDR3 2200 on the Gigabyte boards . I'm curious what difference they'd make on a Q9650, but haven't see any benchmark reviews using DDR3 at 1600/2200 speeds with LGA775.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157174
P43DE3
Memory Standard DDR3 1600/1333/1066/800

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128371
GA-EP45T-UD3LR
Memory Standard DDR3 2200(O.C)/1333

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128433
GA-EP45T-USB3P
Memory Standard DDR3 2200 (OC)/1333/1066/800

I'd read in past past reviews DDR3 didn't make much or any difference for C2Q/C2D, but they were dated reviews 6 months to a year back and latency and speeds on DDR3 have matured dramatically since them while DDR2 hasn't really improved much by comparison. I'd also read their isn't much difference between DDR2 and DDR3, but that was a even older review where DDR3 had really just begun to get introduced and DDR3 has improved leaps and bounds since that time.

This is the sort of thing I'd love seeing toms do a in depth review on comparing C2Q with DDR2 1066/DDR3 1333/DDR3 1600/DDR3 2200 against each other as well as against i7 using DDR3 1600/DDR3 2200 I'd love to see the nitty gritty results on how things compared and how things for LGA775 may have changed or if it's remained the same more or less and it's just a marketing ploy.

 

[jsc]

I cannot see anybody doing an in depth review on what is basically a dead platform.

I'd save my money and buy good DDR3-1600 RAM and run it as fast as I can. DDR3-1600 will let your run the FSB at 400 MHz for a COU core speed of 3.6 GHz. Relaxing the timing and increasing the RAM voltage may let you run faster.

There's no guarantee that DDR3-2200 will give you improved performance.

 

[Lmeow]

Really, apart from overclocking, high speed RAM isn't very useful - in most applications the increased RAM speed from say DDR3 1066MHz to 1866MHz isn't noticeable, and the speed difference between DDR2 and DDR3 isn't very noticeable either. It's probably just me, but my old Athlon 3200+ 2.2GHz machine with 1GB DDR 133MHz RAM ECC RAM seems pretty quick. It boots up faster on a slower 5400RPM IDE HDD, mainly because my Core i7 has a relatively long POST sequence.

 

[knowom]

From what I estimate DDR3 1600 at 6-7-6-21 timings would be roughly 20% quicker than DDR2 1066 at 5-5-5-15 timings as far as overall memory speed is concerned and less heat & power consumption as well, but I'd end up spending $90's more to get it between the ram cost and the added motherboard expense. So I guess I'd be a lot better of using half of my 8GB of 1066 instead and investing the money I save towards something else more useful like gigabit switch and or HD.

 

[knowom]

Best answer selected by knowom.