yes ddr3 has brought on a new wave of confusion. ddr2 was pretty straight forward and you would go for the highest clocks you could get now its just like wtf guess check and revise? well my other calculation was around 3.2ghz nb which would make sense and also agree with demonkevy's though too. but wouldnt 1800 7-7-7 always be faster than 1700 9-9-9 because the timings are lower and the clocks are higher? if you got anything else to show that would be nice. it might take time to get used to this whole ddr3 thing. but hows it on intel's side? did they ever have similar issues on core 2 or i7 with ddr3? seems kinda pointless to be making ram that can run at speeds like 2200 mhz if speeds much lower seem to perform better.