Dual Channel memory question

[paulsy]

Ok I was wondering would it be better to have one stick of 512mb or 2 sticks of 256mb. with a Dual Channel memory mother board.

[Noxious Ninja]

Depends on what you are doing. Many things like video encoding and gaming can benefit greatly from the higher speeds. However, if you plan to add more memory later, you may want to keep your extra slots free.

[paulsy]

well i was thinking about this mobo http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...pa=1&section=2

and it has 4 memory slots so it could hold 4 sticks of 256mb if i wanted to up grade later or would 2 sticks of 512 be a better choice for a later up grade(if i need later down the road)

[Noxious Ninja]

My uncle has that board. It does have four slots, but you can only use three of them at a time. Basically, the extra slot is there in case you need to rearrange your memory for space reasons. Other than that, it is an excellent motherboard.

If you have the money and are willing to spend it, I would get two 512MB sticks of RAM.

[Viperx25]

Well if you want to do dual channel, you need two modules, one in each bank...go for 2x512MB .

[Aleksei (St)]

Originally Posted by The Khan Artist

My uncle has that board. It does have four slots, but you can only use three of them at a time. Basically, the extra slot is there in case you need to rearrange your memory for space reasons. Other than that, it is an excellent motherboard.

If you have the money and are willing to spend it, I would get two 512MB sticks of RAM.

also you should check for lower timings and lower prices i think that kingston is a good brand

[Gamer1]

well, imo, dual channel doesn't do that much. i benched the a7n8x deluxe, and the a7n8x-x, performance was about plus or minus 2 to 3 fps. it's not that big of a deal.

[Viperx25]

Originally Posted by Gamer1

well, imo, dual channel doesn't do that much. i benched the a7n8x deluxe, and the a7n8x-x, performance was about plus or minus 2 to 3 fps. it's not that big of a deal.

yeah for gaming you wont' really see it but dual channel effectively doubles your bandwidth. Single channel DDR 400 has a theoretical bandwidth of 3.2GB/s and in dual channel, that becomes 6.4GB/s. realistically though, the bus isn't that efficient (only about 77%) so the actually bandwidth is ~5.1GB/s. Single channel bandwidth is ~2GB/s. That is a pretty big diff and it really pays off for CPU intensive progs like Seti@Home for example. Some games would benefit i believe, Neverwinter Nights as an example. That game is pretty demanding on a machine and i'm sure it uses quite alot of bandwidth.

[op3n_skill]

uh... IIRC, Dual Channel is good for NForce2 IGPs and Intel Mobos only...

And why go 2x512mb? get 2x1000mb
http://www.crucial.com/store/PartSpe...64Z40B&cat=RAM

Always remember, Memory is Crucial.. For everything else, there's Mushkin

[Viperx25]

Originally Posted by op3n_skill

uh... IIRC, Dual Channel is good for NForce2 IGPs and Intel Mobos only...

You may be right i'm not sure on that..i am speaking from experience with Intel chipsets.

[james.miller]

skull is right, there realy is very little difference to be had from dual channel on AMD boards. the difference really IS 5-10% which is honestly nothing.

I'm running dual channel at 225mhz fsb and usually bench around 3.4gb/sec in sandra's memory benchmark - a far cry from the 7-odd gb/sec i should *theoretically* get.........

Although, i dont argee about the amount of memory. I've never needed more than 768mb or ram. Hell i dont have any problems with 512mb.There are only 3 games that i know of that benifit from more than 768mb of ram, so there realy is no point at all in buying >1gb unless you're a pro photoshopper, ESPECIALLY at the prices they chagre for 1gb sticks

[Demigod]

Well the Athlon XP doesn't really have the FSB bandwidth to take advantage of dual-channel memory. The P4 has much more room on that front. I've never really noticed a difference running single-channel and dual-channel on my machine (although I run dual-channel anyways just for higher bandwidth and the illusion of higher performance).

Originally Posted by james.miller

Although, i dont argee about the amount of memory. I've never needed more than 768mb or ram. Hell i dont have any problems with 512mb.There are only 3 games that i know of that benifit from more than 768mb of ram, so there realy is no point at all in buying >1gb unless you're a pro photoshopper, ESPECIALLY at the prices they chagre for 1gb sticks

You don't need to run Photoshop to need lots of memory. I run games like UT 2003 and Delta Force BHD and they completely stress my memory systems. I noticed a lot of swapping and thrashing with them when I had 512 MB of RAM as those games exceeded my physical RAM amount, forcing the system to use virtual space. I bought another 512 MB stick and no more swapping. I can even switch out of them with little trouble (before I had to wait 15 seconds or more to switch tasks with them). Right now I need 768 MB or more for efficient computer usage.

[Fox5]

I have an nforce 2 motherboard, and I notice a huge difference when using dual ddr. However, I only have PC2100 memory because my cpu only has a 266 FSB, if you have 400 mhz memory(or perhaps even 333) you probably won't notice a big speed increase. It can only help if the PC needs the bandwidth.

BTW, I try to have more than 768 meg of memory because then I can disable the pagefile and get a performance increase.(don't know if it effects games, but it seems to make booting up and shutting down a lot faster) 768 would be enough for most games to disable the page file, but I'd say you'd need at least a gig if you don't want your computer crashing.