If we can get around 2.6ghz nb on air I'm going to go out on a limb and say we should be able to get 3ghz with cold, but the cpu clocks will be very modest if we hit that fast. Ht link does need to be dropped at higher htt frequencies, but I've never noticed any gain beyond dropping to 6x with current phenoms. The 9850 I put under cold did 275 htt with a 10x multi on everything, but the cpu clocked better but wouldn't do nearly that much htt on air.