AMD Athlon 64 Chips Support 500MHz DDR Memory, But Unofficially

Web-Site Investigates Memory Speed Impact on Athlon 64 Performance

by Anton Shilov

[ 07/12/2005 | 04:45 AM ]

Rumours about possible support of higher-speed, beyond officially certified levels, DDR memory by AMD Athlon 64 processors have been floating around for more than a year already, but without any proofs.

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This time it seems that the latest revision E AMD Athlon 64 central processing units (CPUs) have actually gained ability to clock memory at up to 500MHz without exceeding its own stock clock-speed or HyperTransport bus speed. The capability is only available on certain mainboards though.

The question is, however, whether AMD Athlon 64 processors do need additional memory bandwidth at all.

“The performance improvements themselves aren’t tangible, but if you are trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your system, then these new memory dividers offer you one more avenue to do so. If you have memory that can run at higher than DDR400 speeds without any reduction in latency, then by all means, explore the new dividers; just don’t expect them to change your life,” AnandTech web-site explains.

“Based on the tests that we’ve seen here today, AMD’s reluctance to move to higher bandwidth DDR2 offerings makes a lot more sense. The plain fact of the matter is that at the current clock speeds at which the Athlon 64 and X2 line are running, most desktop applications see virtually no benefit from higher bandwidth memory,” AnandTech web-site explains.

• AnandTech: Athlon 64 Revision E: Unofficial DDR500 Support.