Hi guys,

I'm building my first Athlon 64 next week - and I have a question about 800FSB.

The basic spec will be as follows:

Athlon 64 3000 (retail) Skt 754
MSI K8N Neo Platinum (NForce 3)
512K Crucial PC3200

My question is, as the CPU has an 800Mhz FSB - will the RAM need to be installed in matched pairs to run at this speed? The motherboard claims to only support single channel unregistered DIMMs. Crucial tech support claims that 1 PC3200 module will suffice - my previous experience and knowledge of DDR leads me to think that this ram is only good for 400Mhz. So what's correct? And can anyone explain the maths (simply) for me? :haha:

Thanks for your time!

Rich.

The architecture behind the Athlon64 is very different to what was currently available on other CPUs (P4, AthlonXP, etc.). The Athlon64 does not have an FSB. It has a HT (HyperTransport) link between the CPU & the Northbridge which runs at 800mhz or 1GHz (depending on the CPU/motherboard), that is what you are referring to. In order for it to work properly, you just need a motherboard that supports a 800mhz HyperTransport link.

On the other side, the memory is directly connected to the CPU either in a single channel mode (Socket-754) or DualChannel mode (Socket-939/940). If you have a single channel chip, you just need one PC3200 memory module for it to work properly. If you have a dual channel chip, you just need two PC3200 memory modules for it to work properly.