[tjp368]

Hi, one of my bad memory sticks might be replaced and I was wondering how do the different memory banks work? Do they have separate memory controllers for each and can they run at different speeds and timings? On my Gigabyte mobo, you put two memories in the first two slots, but I think they're going in different banks so bank 1 is slot 1 and 3 and bank 2 is slot 2 and 4. Would I be able to run just 3 memories at one time too? And if I'm stuck with two different memories, would it have to run at the pace of the slowest one? Thanks in advance for your replies.

[MattNo5ss]

All RAM installed will have to run at the same speed/timings/voltage. So, if you have two sticks that are rated differently, you'll have to run the slowest speed, loosest timings, and highest voltage of the two sticks (unless you OC the slower/loosest stick). You can run only three sticks, but it will probably be in single channel mode. So, I would run two in dual channel until you get your replacement stick.

[tjp368]

Thanks for the reply. I'm still a little confused, what's dual channel mode and how does it relate to matched pairs and which mems go in which banks? Does one channel go to two different banks or does one channel go to the same bank twice? And does dual channel double the memory bandwidth, this article says it increases performance by only 10%?