Question about ram upgrade

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budica

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Hello,

I have this setup.

P4 Prescott 530 (3.0ghz)
Asus P5P800
512mb DDR 3200
Asus 5700 256mb

I want to upgrade the ram but I'm not too sure what would be better. With the money I have I can either add another stick of 3200 or I could take the stick I have out and add a stick of Dual Channel DDR. What would be better for gaming?

Thanks.
 
get another stick of 512 3200 and run those stick at dual channel. remember, they should be identical sticks to work right, although i have heard of different brand working good in dual channel.

you need two sticks to run dual channel. since dual channel effectively doubles your ram speed, i would pick dual channel for gaming.
 
aaahhhhhh, ok, now I understand the whole dual channel ddr thing. I didn't realise you had to have two sticks.
 
yeah, DDR stands for dual data rate, but you can run two sticks of dual data rate at dual channel mode with two sticks. you may have had the two terms confused, which happens a lot.

Also, your mobo and you chip have to support dual channel mode before you can use it. i am pretty sure that your setup is capable. then you also have to know what ram sockets to use in dual channel, they are not always side by side, sometimes they are color coded.

i would find out what brand DDR you already have and what latency and the whole bit, then match the stick with an identical one and run those at dual channel.
 
I was just looking in my motherboards user guide and it's coour coded. I'll just go to the shop and ask for a second stick of what they gave me last time.

Now, this may be a stupid question but just what advantages does Dual Channel memory offer?
 
I've done some looking and found tons of info on Dual Channel DDR but does anyone know of any sites that show performance comparisons between regular setups and dual channel? Any sites with benchmark tests?

Thanks
 
"Now, this may be a stupid question but just what advantages does Dual Channel memory offer?"

Well first of all, you will be getting another stick of 512, which will put you over the 1 gig mark, which is becoming the standard nowadays. That, coupled with twice as fast access times equal a great performence gain. There will be twice as much data stored and ready on the memory for you apps, and twice as fast, will speed up your comp quite a bit.

I have no links or no info on benchmarking tests comparing memory though. sorry.
 
see I thought that it would only look like 512mg of ram to the computer but now that I know that it's going to be 1gig but a lot faster I'm stoked!!! awsome!!!
 
One other question. Is there a limit on the ram you can use? I've read a few sites and there seems to be conflicting info. One of the sites said that you can't use ram that has chips on both sides of the stick. Is this true?
 
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