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Dual Chanel Memory?

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FloppyHunter

Registered
Joined
Dec 27, 2005
Hey, got a quick question. I have 4 ram slots on my motherboard, and im wondering which of the below would be better

1.792mb ram, in single chanel
(slot 1 = corsair pro xls 512mb)
(slot 2 = corsair pro xls 512mb)
(slot 3 = 512mb)
(slot 4 = 256mb)

1.536mb ram, in dual chanel
(slot 1 = corsair 512mb)
(slot 2 = corsair 512mb)
(slot 3 = 256mb)
(slot 4 = 256mb)

Is it worth the loss of 256mb to make it run in dual chanel mode?

Regards,
Clarky // Hunter
 
Perhaps if you posted your system specs we would have some idea of what you are talking about.

We don't even know if you are using an Intel or AMD CPU. much less what MOBO you have.
 
None, dual channel is better, but only works well with 2 matched sticks of ram, not 4 sticks mismatched.
 
duel channel dramatically increases memory bandwidth, so duel channel is probably better than 256mb more ram.

It is possible to run the configuration you suggest in duel channel on some motherboards; however, your mileage may vary. For example, on my amd64 system it has 4 sticks, 2x512 and 2x256. Of course it only works if the sticks are similar and have compatible timings.

Channel 1
slot 1:512mb
slot 2:256mb

channel 2
slot 1:512mb
slot 2:256mb
 
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I think some motherboards can do this. But traditionally, you cannot run 2x sticks in Dual Channel and have 2x sticks not. In which case having a larger amount of RAM would be better.
 
http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/CS-011965.htm
Here is a common intel chipset reference of possible configurations.

To summarize
The following conditions do not need to be met

* Same brand
* Same timing specifications
* Same DDR speed


Rules to enable duel channel mode

* Matched DIMM configuration in each channel
* Same Density (128MB, 256MB, 512MB, etc.)
* Matched in both Channel A and Channel B memory channels
* Populate symmetrical memory slots (Slot 0 or Slot 1)

Obviously the timings must be compatible, but do not require the same exact specifications.

As you can see, you can even run duel chanel with 3 sticks as long as the first channel memory amount is equal to the second channel. In my case all the memory is running in duel channel.
 
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Run benchmarks of what you do normally using both setups. Sometimes more memory is better than Dual Channel (i.e. if you do photoshop, dual channel is nice but 256MB more memory is better).
 
just sell all your memory on ebay or the classifieds or something and run 2 1gb memory modules and then you have both of best worlds. dual channel and lots of mem.
 
It would be very difficult to determine which setup would be "better".

Pretty much all benchmarks are going to favor the dual channel setup, since those favor RAM speed over RAM size.
And doing real-world programs, you're not going to notice a difference.

Of course we haven't even taken into consideration RAM timings between the two setups. Personally, I would call that the tiebreaker, and go for the dual channel setup (Timings probably going to be a little better on the generic 256MB than the generic 512MB).

This all is assuming that all generic sticks run at the same default speed.
 
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