RAM dual channel question.

manic111 · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:06

Firstly, I dont quite understand what is meant by dual channel (only that it is better)!

I am ordering a rig tomorrow with 2x1gb sticks of Crucial Ballistix PC5300 RAM. I assume that I will be able to run this in dual channel.

However, I am thinking of getting 3GB of RAM instead. If I do this by buying 3x1gb sticks, will I still be able to run this in dual channel, or will I have to buy 2x1gb sticks and 2x512mb sticks?

Nebzor · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:08

If you bought 3 1GB sticks, you could run two of them in dual-channel and have the other on it's own. If you bought 2 512KB and 2 1GB sticks, you could have the two pairs in dual channel, which would be better than the 3 1GB sticks.

manic111 · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:11

K, thats what I thought-cheers. What does dual channel mean anyway?

BAMBI · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:12

Also if you are overclocking you dont want 3 sticks. 2 Sticks of ram is ideal.

Nebzor · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:24

It's all very magical. Basically, all you need to know, is that it effectively doubles the bandwidth of that memory. For example, I think you were using the PC-5300 Crucial Ballistix?

Two sticks, 667MHz x 8 byte data channel = 5336MB/s.
Two sticks in dual channel, 667MHz x 2 8 byte data channels = 10672MB/s.

Jaffa_Cake · 28 Jul 2007 at 23:27

Dual Channel doubles the bandwidth of the memory (I think) Allowing use of two data channels to reduce the bottleneck of the RAM and basically make the ram run faster than one stick can.

See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture

Link gives information about running RAM in dual channel.