i will look at that, for now tho i feel safer with intel i am wanting to find out what will be optimum for my needs, partially future proof but not overkill. i will be using it for probably software development (Visual Studio, PHP etc) some design (photoshop, illustrator maybe others in the CS suite plus 3D modeling, rendering likely Maya, mental ray) Nope. It'll just run at a lower clock speed than it's able to. for example, some motherboards eg. P7H55-M says in intel site says DDR3 1333 so i guess the mother board usually do not overclock by default right? so it means i get a DDR3 1333 RAM will do? maybe with XMP?