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Is it possible to run single channel with two sticks of RAM?

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felinusz

Senior Overclocking Magus
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
Location
Taiwan
Well, I have heard (and discovered myself) that a much higher FSB is obtainable running single channel with one stick of RAM.

Dual channel seems to make very little perfomance difference with AMD systems, and hurts FSB overclocking a fair deal - and I want to raise my FSB a lot more as it is really the only thing I *can* increase with my cooling and processor - I'm topped clock-speed wise.

I have two sticks of RAM - made for dual channel use. But can I run these two sticks in single channel - or is it impossible?

If it is not possible (which I suspect it isn't) Is it worth my time to get a single 512 meg stick of good OCZ Plat BH-5, or Mushkin BH-5 and sell my OCZ EL dual channel kit? Or would the diffrence be negligible, or even negative?

I am kinda stuck between wanting more FSB, and not wanting to sell/trade this RAM :(

Thanks a lot for any help.
 
Well I've been told that placing the ram in slots 1+3 or 1+2 will give you single-channel, however I've never been able to do that. Everytime I put more than one stick in, it will say Dual Channel Enabled upon bootup.
 
Exactly - same here.

The board's manual even seems to hint that it is possible - but doesn't elaborate.
 
felinusz said:
Or would the diffrence be negligible, or even negative?

I am kinda stuck between wanting more FSB, and not wanting to sell/trade this RAM :(


the difference between 210fsb and 230fsb will be negligible. I would keep the 2 sticks over 1 stick for future upgrades like a p4 :p (i recently changed my 230+fsb amd system for a p4)
 
I would never, ever, ever, even *consider* doing something like that :)

The thing that really gets me is how little Dual Channel seems to do for my system - one stick of 256 has a sandra bandwidth virtually the same a two at the same speed - which is odd seeing as how Dual Channel is supposed to be such a groundbreaking thing.
 
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