If you are seeing 'confirmed' permanent linear degeneration of ability then I would suspect defective product or a motherboard hitting the sticks with more juice than its telling you, or.. normal burn-in degeneration.The only way you are going to truly 'damage' a memory stick is heat or over-voltage.. Let me explainJust like when GPU cores are made, memory chips go through bin testing. In other words they get so many chips that will test good at 1200, 1150, 1100, 1080, 1066...The manufacure run in a 'perfect world' is designed for all chips to run the same however its not a perfect world and there are a lot of reason for different 'yelids' in different quality during that process. Each bin is then tested for timing ability. Some will be able to run CAS 4, others CAS 5, CAS 6.. etcOnce the bin process is complete they are sold as their tested specs define, or in the case of the company Crucial which is owned by Micron, they are manufactured in house by being placed on a PCB layer design which is created to maintain the stability of the tested component spec.Now, here is the twist... Just because a stick of memory is rated for 1066 we all know it may be possible to clock that higher.. or even at lower timing in some cases... that is because they do not test every last chip and some of the better ones can end up sold and marked for lower speed and higher timing... or in the case of a lower quality chip getting on a higher quality stick, you get at that point, a defectNowThey regulate the sticks through VR circuits.. those circuits ALSO dictate how far a stick may or may not go. 9 times out of 10, when someone burns a stick of memory the chips are not burned! The voltage regulator circuit POPS. Most sticks that are rated for 1066 will do 1150-1200, some cherry chips will do 1250 but what they do to sell you a stick for the price is regulate that with a circuit which will burn out the VR well before it allows the clock.They do that because the bin they would typically make such sticks from may test iffy for 1150-1200 but that does not mean all the chips are iffy... and of course they want you to buy the DDR2 1140 product for a premium.. SAME CHIPS, different VR circuit and in some cases a different PCB layer design. In that, you get what you pay for (sort of LOL!!) Its just like the automotive industry.. they use the same body and many of the same parts for 2 different types of cars.. the extras and the emblem on the hood sets the price.So you see, you are not reducing performance through clocking a 1066 product unless either those sticks are defective or something on the motherboard is over-volting them and/or not displaying Vdd correctly in the BIOS.OR....there is always 'burn-in' change that can take place with all electronics. How well a product goes through that process varies based on the quality of manufacture and design however you can expect changes in voltage needs and ability over time of stress testing... which is also something we do to get the components through their initial 'burn-in' period and get settings settled to where they will sit pretty much permanent after that assuming all environment factors remain constant. Therefore it is possible to see some degeneration after a hard burn-in of a component. Its normal and its also what you pay the big bucks for with the better products.. they are tested with that burn-in in mind.If the sticks are not falling below thier advertised and sold spec then you may simply be seeing the result of burn-in which would have happened eventually anyway over time no matter what you did in testing timing or speed.Burn-in also accounts for many MANY differences we see in forums for everything from driver revisions being different to someone complaining of a motherboard that should make it to 400Mhz stable, but doesnt.. that board is probably made from lower quality bin components or the critical components are not are not the quality they should be. Thats also why you will see some post they can do 450-480MHz on a board that should not ever go over 400-420. The manufacture may have been running low on the el'cheapo bin and dug into the higher quality parts to finish their manufacture run.It happens all the time in this industryHope that explains it for you ;-)

Hey Jeff. Long time since we last spoke. I have been really busy since you had been helping me with my OC'ing. I had it set up ok, but thought that I was still missing out of a bit of performance increase. I have re-read this thread many times and noticed that in one of your posts you mentioned enabling Load Line Calibration. That seemed to help alot with making steadier performance gains in FS. A few questions since I have been going along, since you have basically the same set up as me.1. I installed PC probe to monitor the NB temps. When I have the NB set to 1.47 - 1.49 V, it idles at around 50 degrees C. Seems a little high to me. What temps are your NB at typically? I ran a p95 test earlier today for 3 hours and then ran FS for about an hour and the NB temps dont seem to get higher than about 53 degrees. If I set the NB voltage to 1.45 V then it idles at around 46 degrees, but I seem to get some video card anomalies with black spikes on the screen, so I have to stay around 1.49 volts or so.2. Since doing the OC, I seem to get the best performance out of setting the vcore at 1.30 v and LLC enabled. Under load CPU-Z reads pretty steady at around 1.28 volts, wehere before enabling LLC the vcore would go down to around 1.24 volts. Is it ok to have the voltage constantly staying that high? Under load with small ffts in p95 the vcore temps never go above 49 degrees. Seems like anything under 50 degrees under load should be safe?3. Finally the last, but most important question. Since OC'ing I seem to have some sound issues with the speakers making some weird crackling noise and some bit of static poping sounds. This is usually only the case when advancing the throttles or making power adjustments. I have tried turning of the hardware acceleration but that hasn't helped. This cracking noise from the speakers is really the only problem I am having with the OC so far. Do you think that I need more voltage somewhere or perhaps I am overvolting somehting? I am running the sound card that came with the board. All was fine with the sound before the OC, so I doubt that the card is bad. Even if I undo the OC and go back to stock setting the sound problem clears up.I will list my setting below so you can check them.Extreme Tweaker Ai Overclock Tuner : Manual CPU Ratio Control : 9FSB Frequency : 400 FSB Strap to North Bridge : 400PCI-E Frequency: 100DRAM Frequency: DDR2- 1066DRAM Command Rate : 2TDRAM Timing Control: Manual CAS# Latency : 5RAS# to CAS# Delay : 5RAS# Precharge : 5RAS# ActivateTime : 15RAS# to RAS# Delay : AutoRow Refresh Cycle Time : AutoWrite Recovery Time : AutoRead to Precharge Time : AutoRead to Write Delay (S/D) : AutoWrite to Read Delay (S) : AutoWrite to Read Delay (D) : AutoRead to Read Delay (S) : AutoRead to Read Delay (D) : AutoWrite to Write Delay (S) : AutoWrite to Write Delay (D) : AutoDRAM Static Read Control: AutoAi Clock Twister : AutoTransaction Booster : AutoCPU Voltage : 1.30CPU PLL Voltage : 1.50North Bridge Voltage : 1.49DRAM Voltage : 2.1FSB Termination Voltage : 1.40South Bridge Voltage : AutoLoadline Calibration : EnabledCPU GTL Reference : AutoNorth Bridge GTL Reference : AutoDDR2 Channel A REF Voltage : AutoDDR2 Channel B REF Voltage : AutoDDR2 Controller REF Voltage : AutoSB 1.5V Voltage : AutoNB LED Selection : NB Volt SB LED Selection : SB Volt CPU LED Selection : CPU VOlt Voltiminder LED : AutoCPU Spread Spectrum : AutoPCIE Spread Spectrum : AutoThank God for the template for the settings posted in the Maximus forum in the link you posted. That would have taken a while to list. I think I read somewhere about changing a setting in the list above PCIE Spread Spectum for someone having sound issues, but I can find the post. Anyway, perhaps you have an idea about the sound problem?Also, you will notice that I haven't tried an changes to the Ai clock twister yet. Not really sure about that setting. I look forward to you thoughts on this. Thanks for all the help you have provided so far.Sean