Matched pairs for AMD 800FSB?

[Richykins]

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.

 

[Didou]

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.