Question about RAM

The prices for RAM have decreased drastically in the last month, so I'm thinking of buying 4GB (2 x 2GB) of RAM. The problem is there are so many options on Newegg that I have no idea which is the best one as most of them have gotten good reviews. The computer I am going to install the RAM on has a Quad Core Q6600 OC'ed to 3.2GHz and is running Windows Vista 32-bit. I've heard that either the memory or the processor is usually the bottleneck of computer speed. So should I get DDR2 800, DDR2 1066, or etc? I'm not necessarily looking for the best deal (budget is $200, which I think is pretty high), but simply for the fastest and most reliable RAM product to go along with the processor to ensure no loss of computing speed.

Thanks!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You're going to have to stick with 800 if you want to stay within your budget. After 800, the prices start at $110 and start going exponentially higher. In all honesty, most of the big brands pretty much give you the same performance. OCZ, Crucial, and G.Skill are the brands you should be eying.

You do know that you're going to unable to fully utilize all of your RAM due to the limitations of a 32bit system, right?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Will getting 800 sticks decrease the performance of the computer that much? I'm a huge multitasker, and would also like to stay on top of the latest games, apps (photoshop, premiere, etc), and videos (1080p quality movies). And yea, I read about the RAM limitations of XP and Vista.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

1080p video's? You got a blu-ray or HD-DVD player in your computer system? let alone a monitor to support that?

As for the ram limitations.. With XP, the system simply cannot apply more than 2gb of ram to any application(s) running. Vista x86 is only limited by the 16 bit memory address problem. I also noticed your CPU is oc'd, care to give the details? What you have your FSB set to will effect the ram ratio.. Example is if you have your FSB at 400, there is no problem to run it 1:1. However if you have it at say.. 442x7 or something... then chances are you would have to run the ram at a lower ratio to compensate, provided we are talking about DDR2-800. Honestly though, for gaming and multitasking, the difference between DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 is moot, Few applications notice it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

@Garret: What's this 16bit memory address problem with Vista? I didn't hear about that one.

Also there was this bootswitch were you could modify the address-space splitting from 2/2 GB to 3/1 GB. Means the kernel passes one gigabyte to the userspace address-space. I don't know if that's problematic with kernel-space drivers that do a lot of memory mapping. But you CAN let an application use 3GB of physical memory on a 32bit Windows.

EDIT: Another thing came to my mind. An application can itself request a chunk of virtual memory from the OS and so use more than usual stack+heap. Another way around the 2GB problem. Of course this method is slower because of higher indirection level.
Although I still recommend going full 64bit, we have used 32bit long enough :-)

I was speaking idiomatically.