3Gb DDR2 ????

nheather

nheather

nheather

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Looking at laptops as Christmas presents for my daughter an wife.

Early days yet, but many I have seen come with 3GB DDR2 configured as 1x2GB and 1x1GB.

My preference is for 4GB anyway but was thinking as they will be running 32bit, they probably won't be able to access much more than 3GB anyway.

But the big question I have is this

As the two modules are different sizes does this mean that they won't run in Dual Channel mode?

Cheers,

Nigel
 
To the best of my knowledge yes. Again from foggy memory - but I believe this is only going to be a small (circa 5%) performance hit though.
 
Hi,

No dual channel on that RAM setup.

It seems strange that it is 1x2GB and 1X1GB, the 2gb module would be more expensive to the supplier. For a 3gb system I would have expected 2X1GB and 2X512MB and dual channel enabled
 
It seems strange that it is 1x2GB and 1X1GB, the 2gb module would be more expensive to the supplier. For a 3gb system I would have expected 2X1GB and 2X512MB and dual channel enabled
Click to expand...

All of the laptops I have had experience with could only be fitted with a maximum of 2 modules.

Cheers,

Nigel
 
Depending on the chipset, its possible to get dual channel with mismatched memory, its certainly possible on desktop machines, though I have no idea about the situation with a laptop.

Generally a desktop with a recent Intel chipset and mismatched ram will attempt to run dual channel where the memory overlaps, so in this case you would have 2gb in dual channel (half the 2gb stick and the entire 1gb stick), the second half of the 2gb stick would then revert to single channel access.

Normally if partial dual channel has worked, it will say dual channel in CPUZ or as the computer boots up.

Personally for performance I prefer full dual channel without any trickery.
 
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