on a good day with lynnfield i can get my sticks to post and boot something like 5-7-7-21 2T 1600 (don't remember the exact timings, but is was CL5), not stable worth a damn. Also dumping crazy volts, like 1.8 IIRC (which is a lot for Hypers)
I almost got it to boot on my Athlon II, but as usual AMD IMC was piece of ____ and didn't want to
I could do CL6 though, which is no slouch on AMD anyways.
You really need to find a balance of timings to speed. I think for intel 2k CL8 is a pretty good spot. AMD is easier to get 1600 CL6 or similar.