memory timing question

I have a system with the following Specs
Mother board : Asus P5N32 SLI SE Deluxe (Bios 603)
Proc: E6700 liquid cooled
Mem: 2Gb of DDR2 PC6400 (400Mhz x2)
Gfx: 7900 GTX 512Mb
PSU: 700W ATX

Although this is a fairly powerful system, I am using FSX (Microsoft Flight Simulator), and this is a very CPU hungry app. Sometime my frame rate drops to 10Fps with both Core maxed at 100%, so I am thinking of overclocking my system (the E6700 having supposedly room to do that).

After investigation it looks like my Mother board is not a very good one for the Job, maxing out around 350 FSB. This being said I found someone online who claims he successfully OC the system to 3.2 Ghz (320 FSB 10x mult) by raising the Vcore to 1.375. This is not stellar, but a 20% increase would still be welcome, so I am willing to give it a shot.

My question is regarding the memory. Right now the memory is set to asynchronous mode with a 2:3 multiplier (memory at 400 Mhz FSB at 266) but with timings of 5-5-5-15(tRas)-22(tRc) (which from what I read are fairly conservative numbers). Even if I successfully overclock to 320 FSB in asynchronous mode this would call for a 4:5 multiplier (memory still going faster than the FSB).

So the questions are:
Would it be faster to run the memory synchronously (1:1) but with a smaller timing (like 4-4-4)
If so what kind of performance gain a reduction of the timing like this gives compare to the overclock of the Cpu (I know each system is different, but I am looking for a ballpark comparison between memory timing reduction and Cpu OC).
What about the tRas and tRc timing, should I try reducing these too ( I read that sometimes it is better to leave them alone), and if so how much.

Thank you for any feedback you can offer

 

Ram clock speed is more important then timings any more. Your best bet is to leave the timings alone for the time being and focus on clock speed, but keep in mind raising the timings will most likely help you get faster ram clock speeds in the long run. As for tRas and Trc, they tend to be rather sensitive timings. More so with tRas which can corrupt the data on your hard drive easily if set to low. I recommend leaving them both at stock or slightly above to get faster ram clocks.

 

thanks for the feedback.
Apreciate it