AMD - Mobo - RAM questions

I'm a little confused about the relationship between Hypertransport speed and RAM speed. For instance, AMD says the 252 Opteron (940) has a hypertransport speed of 1Ghz. But all of the mobo manufacturers make 2-way Opteron models that only use dual-channel DDR 400 RAM. Also, OCZ makes dual channel DDR2 PC2-800 memory that runs at 1Ghz. What motherboard could possibly handle this RAM?

I want to match up dual AMD Opteron 252s with the fastest RAM that the CPUs will support. Any reccommendations?

ORIGINAL: wogg

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DDR2 RAM is being used by Intel on their new LGA platforms. It has high sustained bandwidth but higher latencies, so the performance has not been any better than DDR... yet.

LOL ! once step forward.. one step back.. that is so like the computer industry all they want is a new product to sell and they try to deal with the problems later.

ORIGINAL: wogg

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The memory is accessed directly from the CPU via the on board memory controller. Currently it is capable of using dual channels of DDR400 RAM. So get the best brand name DDR400 you can get with a solid CAS rating of 2.
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Wogg,

Is DDR400 the fastest RAM that I can use with an AMD chip?

There are two routes to improving memory performance with an Athlon 64/Opteron CPU:

1. Buy fast PC3200/DDR400 memory. For example, I just bought 2x1GB of the OCZ Platinum Dual-Channel "EL" memory, rated at 2-3-2-5 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS). It's the fastest memory I could find in matched 1G sticks (I hope to go to 4G total memory eventually), and OCZ has an excellent rep for compatibility with the Athlon 64. (RAM is relatively cheap currently; my 2G cost $299 for high-performance memory; 6 months or so back it would have cost $500 or so for the same amount of moderate-performance memory. I can now tweak BIOS memory parameters without running anything out of spec. There are less-expensive 2x1G kits, from OCZ and others, but I might have saved $50-70 at most (unless I went with "value" grade RAM), and I expect to use these sticks for at least 2-3 years.

2. Overclock. OCZ (and other brands) offer memory products that are designed to overclock - not that I'm recommending it. If you're interested in this route, check out the OCZ forums (see www.ocztechnology.com) , www.anandtech.com and related sites. I may try overclocking in six months or so -- haven't decided yet (overclocking makes for a hotter/noisier system, may reduce component life, may impair system stability .... none of which are very appealing).

- Jim

2 x nVidia 6600GT video cards

Wow dude! You gonna game with that thing or what? 100+fps in Doom 3 in your purchasing criteria? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my R9800 PRO just got really jealous. But even then I keep my gaming seperated from my DAW in another system. Primarily becuase games tend to be buggy and require bleeding edge and less than stable drivers to run, that and the fans on the graphics cards are annoying.

There's also some horror stories floating around about PCI express video cards hogging the bandwidth for the legacy PCI bus causing all kids of pops, clicks, and dropouts. And with a pair of video cards in SLI mode sucking 16 lanes of PCI express all the time, you're asking for trouble. The 828MKII and the firewire cards are PCI correct? That may be a big headache... I haven't verified any of this myself but negative buzz usually shys me away from such things. Look for more input on that one, preferably from someone else with a MOTU interface.

It looks like your aiming at some serious performance stuff and no doubt it would be a screaming machine, especially for gaming, but you may want to re-think your target away from game performance and focus on what will work well for audio.