4 Sticks work in dual channel?

celliott · 6 Feb 2006 at 22:01

I currently have a 1gb geil dual channel kit on my asus a8v deluxe mobo. Can anyone confirm that this will support 4 sticks (4x 512mb) working in dual channel mode?

I think I remember seeing something a while back that it cant do 4 sticks with dual channel.

Thanks

Phil2008 · 7 Feb 2006 at 00:16

well it depends some amd cpus can handle 4 sticks. I know I fI put 4 sticks in my system with my FX55 clawhammer cpu, the fsb will drop to 133 or 166, instead of the stock speed of 200. But newer amd cpus can handle 4 sticks of memory without any speed loss

Big.Wayne · 7 Feb 2006 at 00:22

Yup, from what I have read its the CPU that determines what works as it has the memory controller built in!

Overlag · 7 Feb 2006 at 02:06

the latest AMD memory controllers in the FXs 57 - 60 and the venice/san diego will run 4 memory chips (or 8 banks) fine at 200mhz but will back down to 2t timings.

first core revisions can only do 166 as already said.

of coarse the motherboard (the bios) might also automatically disable 200mhz if the motherboard manufacture seems to think it wont work.

Dirk · 7 Feb 2006 at 03:29

Ok, some confusion here me thinks. The OP wanted to know about dual-channel, and the answer is yes. If you buy another pair then you will have 2xdual channel running effectively.

The penalties as mentioned above are two things. On older CPUs the memory controllers weren't liking having 4xmodules so much that they would get stroppy and drop the RAM speed to 166MHz. This isn't the case with recent cores like the San-Diego. The other penalty is having to run 1T RAM @ 2T. This is still the case although the DFI Expert is supposed to address this problem.

caff · 7 Feb 2006 at 13:48

I had bad problems running 4 sticks of TwinMOS 512MB in dual channel - I had graphical glitches and frequent crashes. So to get 2GB dual channel I had to replace the whole lot with 2 sticks of 1GB Corsair Value Select.

This isn't so bad, because I put the old sticks up on ebay and made back most of what I originally paid a year ago.

Maybe better (more expensive) brands of memory are better, but it doesn't sound like it from the above posts. I'd go for a new matched pair to be sure.