Hypertransport and Memory Modules

[bluepointe]

Got a friend of mine who talked to a "tech" and told him that to enable HyperTransport you need to DIMMs in your motherboard of EQUAL SIZE. And that it creates something like an equivalent to a "raid stryping" situation? Is there any truth to this? I just don't know enough about how Hypertransport works to give him any feedback.

 

[ribbon13]

HyperTransport is how AMD CPUs communicate with everything besides RAM. So I say bullshit, because then your computer wouldn't even POST.

The only thing you need two modules of equal size for is 128-bit interleaved mode (Dual channel) and for Opterons to not default to DDR333 2T

 

[ts3433]

That description fits dual channel memory, but has nothing to do with enabling Hypertransport.

 

[bluepointe]

Yeah it sounded like the guy was talking out of his @ss. So pairing a 512 and a 256MB stick of memory isn't going to hinder system performance, right?

 

[ts3433]

It will on a 939 system because you can't run dual channel, but you should still perform equivalently to a S754 system with a processor of the same cache and clock speed. Dual channel here only improves performance about 5% in most situations when all other factors of the CPU are kept equal.

Though I will agree that he was talking out of his ass, all he did was mix up a term.