This article from Legion Hardware is a MUST read- It answers alot of questions about which memory to choose and finds some surprising results when coparing performance of different bandwidths and different latencies. They conclude that expensive high speed memory can be a real waste of money in some Intel setups (ie NVidia mobos unlocked), where it can be outperformed by 667 with low latencies.
"Double Data Rate (DDR) memory started life at 200MHz (PC-1600) developing 1.6GB/s and with dual channel technology had the potential to double this theoretical peak bandwidth. Eventually DDR hit 400MHz (PC-3200) and this was the final JEDEC specification for the DDR memory standard. In dual channel operation DDR-400 could produce up to 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth, which was more than enough for any AMD or Intel processor at the time. In fact, it was more than enough for the upcoming AMD and Intel processors for quite some time as well.
Nevertheless, Intel wanted to push on and therefore did so by quickly adopting DDR2 technology, which started at 400MHz developing the same 3.2GB/s of DDR-400 memory. However, despite poorer memory timings DDR2-400 memory was actually much slower than DDR-400 memory, which was obviously quite a problem. Therefore the PC-4200 specification was quickly released, operating at 533MHz and developing 4.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. Despite offering a 32% increase in memory bandwidth, DDR2-533 memory was still slower than low latency DDR-400 memory. "
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"Double Data Rate (DDR) memory started life at 200MHz (PC-1600) developing 1.6GB/s and with dual channel technology had the potential to double this theoretical peak bandwidth. Eventually DDR hit 400MHz (PC-3200) and this was the final JEDEC specification for the DDR memory standard. In dual channel operation DDR-400 could produce up to 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth, which was more than enough for any AMD or Intel processor at the time. In fact, it was more than enough for the upcoming AMD and Intel processors for quite some time as well.
Nevertheless, Intel wanted to push on and therefore did so by quickly adopting DDR2 technology, which started at 400MHz developing the same 3.2GB/s of DDR-400 memory. However, despite poorer memory timings DDR2-400 memory was actually much slower than DDR-400 memory, which was obviously quite a problem. Therefore the PC-4200 specification was quickly released, operating at 533MHz and developing 4.2GB/s of memory bandwidth. Despite offering a 32% increase in memory bandwidth, DDR2-533 memory was still slower than low latency DDR-400 memory. "
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