[rick737]

I put a single stick of corsair value ram (1 gig ) in my system ( gigabyte mobo, amd 3700 ) and when I boot it says my ram is running in single channel. Should I have bought 2 sticks of 512 mb instead? Do you think I'll see a big difference by adding another 1 gig stick to bring it to dual channel? I do a little gaming and a lot of internet surfing.

 

[xarglaph]

some motherboards don't let ram operate at its full speed unless it's in dual channel mode. my abit aw8d makes my ddr2 800 stick run at 533mhz... i'm waiting to get another one, but yeah, most likely upgrading to dual channel will increase your performance unless your board doesn't nerf like mine does.

 

[linderman]

yes aadding another one gig EXACT matching stick (same manufacturer, model # the whole speil) will yield very nice improvement!


if you dont match the stick perfectly you wont get dual channel even with two sticks installed


nowdays two gigs of memory is really benefical

 

[Kalim]

Get Dual Channel i.e. for DDR400

Single Channel: PC3200 = 3.2Gb/s
Dual Channel: PC6400 = 6.4Gb/s

With the SAME matching sticks, see the difference?

It mimics having DDR800 while you only have DDR400 in reality.

 

[dead7iestweap0n]

so with dual cahnel, if i wanted 2 gigs of ddr i would have to put in 4 1gb sticks?

 

[Tumbleweed36]

so with dual cahnel, if i wanted 2 gigs of ddr i would have to put in 4 1gb sticks?

Hi,

I really think you did not understand what was said. If you want 2 gigs, you could either use 2 - 1gig sticks or 4 - 512 sticks. However, they must be matching sold as matched pairs.

 

[TheMatt]

And to get dual channel, they must be in the correct RAM slots in the motherboard. Most modern motherboards have RAM slots color coded, so put matched pairs in the same color slots for dual channel.

 

[Kalim]

*Find out if your motherboard supports a Dual Channel setup - manual
*Look at the maximum size per bank (per side), per slot and total max for RAM it will accept - manual
*Look at the max DDR rating it will accept - manual
*Decide on how much you want, of which and obviously, how much to spend.
*Look for Low Density RAM, compatible with all mobo's.
*If you decide on 2GB and your Mobo supports that with lets say 4 DIMM slots, you can either get 4 RAM sticks x 512MB of the same make/model put in OR 2 RAM sticks x 1GB of the same make/model put in.

That will be a dual channel setup and you'll reap the maximum performance as being advised by all.