Hi all, long-time viewer first-time poster here

Just wondering about this, looking for some input from experienced OCers, or indeed just general-knowledged people.

Recently went about experimenting with a higher fsb and lower multi on my cpu, as I'd heard it was "better".
Edit: I'm strictly asking this from a gaming point of view, as well as general PC operations

e6600
2Gb OCZ PC8500 Sli-Ready
Asus P5B Deluxe

Was running a 377 fsb with the default 9x multi on the e6600 for a 3.4ghz, with a 1:1 FSB:RAM Ratio, giving me effective DDR2-754 speed with 4-4-4-10 at 1.8v.

Decided to reboot comp and change it to a higher fsb with lower multi to see what I could end up with.

Now running a 425 fsb with an 8x multi for the same clock of 3.4ghz, 1:1 for DDR2-850 speed, still with 4-4-4-10 but at 1.9v.

The thing I'm looking at is Everest Ultimate's memory benchmark tests.

With my old setup I was getting around 7.8 Mb/sec read, 6.8Mb/sec write with a memory latency of ~57ns.

On the new setup, with clock speed, fsb:ram ratio and timings all kept the same, but now "faster" operating ram, I'm getting 7.6Mb/sec read, 7.75Mb/sec write, but I'm up to 68ns latency.

Now i'm fairly good with overclocking, I'd say I had a decent level of experience with it, my question here is whether or not what I've done is justified?

Is DDR2-850 really faster than DDR2-754 with the same timings, given that my read speed has dropped slightly and memory latency increased greatly?

Am i better off trying to achieve the highest FSB with a lower multi and nice high 1:1 ram speeds (voltage aside) or would i be better off reverting to my 9x multi and using modest fsb speeds with an effectively lower ram frequency but reduced memory latency? (10ns difference mind you)

Any help would be appreciated, thanks