Nforce 2 memory question

jeggsy · 27 Jun 2007 at 22:38

I have an Abit NF7S motherboard with Nforce 2 chipset and had a question about the memory.

At the moment I have 2x 512Mb Corsair PC3200 CL2 DDR sticks installed which means I have an empty memory slot.

From what I remember, with the Nforce 2 chipset, if you have 2 memory sticks installed then it works in a faster dual-channel mode.

What would happen if I installed a similar memory stick in the empty slot. Would it still work in this faster dual-channel mode ?? Would I loose any performance from adding another stick ??

Cheers
Paul

helmutcheese · 27 Jun 2007 at 23:33

Ok its picky and does not always work, but sure you can run 3 sticks in dual chahnel mode depending on sizes all adding up.

Example: 2x 512MB sticks in the correct slots for dual channel currently.

Remove the stick from slot 1 and insert the 1GiG new stick, add the removed 512MB stick to the unused slot.

This is on my old mobo anyhow (I only used 2x 1GiG) but you need both smaller sticks to add up to same as the 1 bigger stick and must look at your manual or colours of slots to work out how to set up, mines would have been 1GiG in BLACK Slot 1, 1 stick of 512MB in each of the 2 BLUE Slots so slot 2 and 3.

You only got about 12% max gain in dual channel on NF2, since now newer AMD CPU' s have memory controler on CPU it can be up to 100% in theory.

ooaldridge · 28 Jun 2007 at 00:26

i once had an nf7s mobo and 2x 512 ram, added an extra 512 and did notice the difference, especially in games. Then i went to 2gb and the difference showed aswell with the advances in memory demand.

What ive noticed is as software advanced needing more memory to run smoothly the more memory i had out-weighed the loss of dual channel. From when 2x 512 ran even quicker in dual channel for overkill it is now a bit dated as most people now are looking to get 2gb -4gb.

helmutcheese · 28 Jun 2007 at 01:01

Thats 1.5GiG of ram but 3x 512MB sticks cant run dual channel.
I had to go from 1GiG to 2GiG the day FEAR came out, it ate my 1GiG and 1.5GiG Page File, once I stuck in new 2GiG kit it used about 1.5GiG and ran far better (obv very high settings and on a 7900GTX)

jeggsy · 28 Jun 2007 at 21:54

Cheers for your help guys.

Anybody have any experience with OCZ memory ??

Can get a 2Gb (2x1Gb) OCZ EL PC-3200 Platinum XTC Edition DDR kit from work for a really good price and wondered if it was any good.

I would have thought that it should work OK with my setup and then sell my old Corsair DDR for a few £££.

Any thoughts ??

helmutcheese · 28 Jun 2007 at 22:03

I had good luck with Corsair ram on Asus NF2, ended up without voltmod at 480FSB(ddr) and with small increae in volts after voltmod 500FSB(ddr), may have done more but ram was PC3500, later got PC4400 but sold rig.