Is one HDT link more than enough for lower end AMD64 chips?

[MadRat]

I was thinking that the lower end AMD64 chips (Athlon 64, Opteron, Lateron, etc) would probably only saturate a single HDT channel 95% of the time. Seems to me that the Athlon 64 might be a better solution than spending alot more on the full-blown 100-series Opterons because they shouldn't be much difference in performance. I'm excited to hear what the differences is going to be between processors and performance. It may end up being that Athlon 64 makes the lowend Opteron pointless.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: MadRat
I was thinking that the lower end AMD64 chips (Athlon 64, Opteron, Lateron, etc) would probably only saturate a single HDT channel 95% of the time. Seems to me that the Athlon 64 might be a better solution than spending alot more on the full-blown 100-series Opterons because they shouldn't be much difference in performance. I'm excited to hear what the differences is going to be between processors and performance. It may end up being that Athlon 64 makes the lowend Opteron pointless.

I don't see how one HT link (don't know where the 'D' is in HyperTransport) can be more than enough as all IO goes through it AFAIK.

I think you are right tho, the low end Opterons will be irrelevant as the A64 is roumoured to come in two flavours, single and twin HT links. The latter having the higher pin count and the same architecture as the current 100 series, but maybe with a different Memery interface (400DDR min?).

Only time will tell.

 

[MDE]

I'm pretty sure the Athlon64 will be in single and dual channel memory, not single\dual HyperTransport links.