Dual Channel Ram

[sithspawn]

Im pretty new to this dual channel ram stuff. I know that there are three memory slots, two together and one slightly apart. to have dual channel activated you need to have one stick in the two that are together, and another in the one that is apart (stop me if im wrong).

Im wondering which is faster:
Putting one 512 Mb stick in just one of the slots. Or putting 2 256 Mb sticks so that it takes advantage of the dual channel.

 

[sithspawn]

I meant to add this in the above post:

If using an nForce2 chipset, would it be a bad idea to use anything besides an nvidia graphics card? Im pretty sure the chipset has some inbuilt graphics functions and im not sure whether it would sit to happy with an ATi card. (maybe it is set to detonate if it senses anything besides an nvidia card)

 

[didi]

The Dimms slot is correct, u can double check cosz the two Dimms slot that 4 dual channel is same colour,usually.
If u put 2x256MB Ram n run in dual channel, is definitely faster than 1 stick of 512 Ram. But, remember to turn on this dual channel function~~some mobo need to manually on in BIOS settings.
R u not satisfy with u built in VGA?
I think is not a big problem is u want to change a ATI series graphic card. So far never any conflict about this.Well, u can try n let me know in case got any problems.

 

[Kangaroo]

Manufacturers would not have adopted the nforce chipset if it did not support ATI cards. Nforce chipset works as fast as the VIA chipset on ATI cards. Nforce2 will work well with both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards.

The correct configuration to enable Dual Channel is DIMM1 and DIMM 3, usually the 2 DIMM slots that are furthest apart.

Dual Channel 512MB would be faster than Single channel 512MB.