RAM help

[excalibur__69]

Hey guys,

I have a few questions I hope here the pro's will be able to answer.

I will be buying a new PC within the week, (Athlon 2500+ Barton, A7N8X mobo) and I am deciding on RAM. I had first considered purchasing 1x512 MB PC2700 Kingston RAM, however, the store sold out of this product. I am left with getting 2x256 MB of PC2700 Kingston RAM. Upgrading in the future is not an issue. However, I have 2 questions:

1. will one of these setups be faster/slower than the other
2. I've been reading up on Dual-Channel setups, and will getting 2 256 MB sticks in the proper slots on the mobo allow for dual channel? or do i need to buy a special type of memory (ie. 2 sticks bundled together of a certain brand) to utilize dual channel? Also, does anyone know if dual channel setup will work with PC2700 RAM on the A7n8x?

Thanks a bunch guys

 

[mrzeeedler]

dual channel is faster however i believe you can run one stick of 512 then later buy another and run dual channel. If your interested i got a stick of the same memory your looking for which is kingston pc2700 ddr333 i used it for a little then run a differnt kind of memory now. But this worked great and tested good.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4124892026

 

[TrowaBarton]

kingston question

Any reason you're partial to Kingston memory?

 

[excalibur__69]

not particularly, except the store that I'm getting my PC from, the only 'reputable' brands of RAM they carry are Kingston and OCZ, and OCZ is a little to pricy for me...

 

[mrzeeedler]

its a good deal on this kingston memory. they are one of the best.

 

[CrucialLabs]

So, which one of these setups is faster? well, if your motherboard supports dual channel, the 2x256MB modules would be better. If your board does not then it really does not matter except for future upgardes. You do not want to take up too many slots or you will be replacing the memory you have.

To achieve dual channel you need to get:

2 modules of the same megabytes
both need to be double or single sided, no mixing.
both need to have all the same attributes.

If you have all these things covered then you can run in dual channel. Be careful, you can buy one module now and one later but you need to make sure the module you buy later has all the same characteristics of the original one.

 

[rakesh_1024]

RAM apart.
y don,t u consider 2400+ or 2600+.
I heard that 2400+ is better than 2500+ because of higher cache