I'm going to be building a new system and am planning on using a motherboard using the nForce 780i chipset and a Core 2 Duo processor (E8500, 1333MHz FSB). Am I right in thinking that any RAM higher than DDR2 800 is only needed for over-clocking? That's one area I've never delved into, but I always see it mentioned that you want a 1:1 ratio to the RAM speed and FSB. So, if faster memory is only needed for overclocking, where there be a performance decrese if I do utilize faster memory (on the off chance that I may want to overclock in the future)? Any help appreciated. Michael J

DDR2-800 is extremely cheap right now. Get it & underclock to 667MHz to run 1:1 with a 1333MHz FSB CPU. If you overclock in the future, you'll be good up to at least 1600MHz FSB.

So, I would underclock the memory and not the FSB or CPU, correct? Michael J

Here's the proper FSB:DRAM pairing for 1:1 ratio: 800MHz FSB : DDR400 or DDR2-400 1066MHz FSB : DDR2-533 1333MHz FSB : DDR2-667 1600MHz FSB : DDR2-800 This only applies to Intel Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad systems...it does NOT apply to the P4. It also doesn't apply to AMD systems because they don't use a FSB.