Quote -  Do a little research on the components; DDR-3 is currently turning in a less that 5% speed increase over DDR-2. If that benchmark noticeable fraction is worth the $300 buck, get the bleeding edge. I tend to stay a generation behind the bleeding edge, myself; it saves you money, and compatibility headaches that nearly always arise when new hardware meets old software....

In a 1:1 comparison, yes, DDR3 RAM is marginally slower. However, when paired with an i7 CPU, which has an on-die memory controller, it is faster AND can be run in triple channel, something that DDR2 cannot and neither AMD nor older Intel chipsets can do. When run in triple channel with the new on-die memory controller, there is a significant performance difference between DDR3 and DDR2.