Have a question for the masses. I am building an I7 system and will be using 3x2gb of ddr3 2000mhz ram and was wondering if I would see better performance from running it at the stock spec of 9-9-9-24 at 2000mhz or under clocking it to 1600mhz with 7-7-7-20 timings. Any feedback would be great. I guess I should mention that in a month or so it will be doubling it to 12gb, once i get some more cash flowing.

When I ran a bench of 4 gigs @ 1066 5-5-5-15, and another bench @ 800 4-4-4-12, There was only a small difference. A few hundred points if that, probably not even noticeable for gaming etc, Running it at the slower speed it benched less for my setup.

I would bow to the I7 users here for the input at those speeds and timings. But I don't think the difference is going to be huge. For the increase in speed will be matched with slower timing. So one would surmise the difference would be marginal.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mem ... 25-11.html

I have read on other forums that running at 1600mhz at tight timings is about the same as 2000mhz at looser timings.
I'll be using 2000mhz ram on my i7 build also, but will be using it at 2000mhz.
I went with the Xeon W3520 for the processor, which is pretty much the same as the i7 920 D0.
I would run some benches and find out for sure. What motherboard are you using? There's not a whole lot to choose from.