2x1gb +another 1gb, dual channel will still work?

[duffman03]

I've recently ordered some G.Skill ddr2-800 2x1GB memory, however I also have a single 1gb stick of Kingston ddr2 800 memory laying around.

My question is, can I install the 2x1gb and the 1gb memory and still run dual channel? Will I be able to use all 3gb of memory and still have the G.Skill memory running dual channel?

Thanks in advance

[polobunny]

Even number of sticks for dual channel.

Although I believe certain chipsets (nForce 3 for example if I'm not mistaken) would allow dual channel with 3 sticks, keeping the 1 stick not on same bank as single channel. Not something officially supported though.

Edit: At any rate, sometimes your best bet is to look in your motherboard user manual. They will list supported configurations for dual channel operation.

[duffman03]

thanks, thats pretty much what I suspected..

I'm guessing that the best course of action would be to just use the 2x1gb kit, and throw the Kingston 1gb back into storage? I'll get better performance from 2gb of dual channel than from 3gb of non dual channel?

[screwballl]

it depends on the motherboard...

My Asus A7N8X can use 3 sticks and still be dual channel...
My Gigabyte P965 board has to have 2 or 4 sticks, not 3

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by screwballl

it depends on the motherboard...

My Asus A7N8X can use 3 sticks and still be dual channel...
My Gigabyte P965 board has to have 2 or 4 sticks, not 3

On the chipset more precisely. A7N8X is nForce 2, so maybe it was NF2 I was thinking about. Or maybe both. :P

[duffman03]

just took a look through the manual, apparently the ep35 ds3r only supports 2 and 4 stick configurations for dual channel, like your p965 does. So now my question is, should I go for 3gb of memory but no dual channel, or 2gb with it?

[screwballl]

give it a run.... run some benchmarks to see if there is any performance gain using dual channel... in most cases there is very little difference as the increased memory makes up for the loss of dual channel performance... but that is subject to your specific usage.

[Boy'nBlack]

Exactly...run it and see. Really depends on what you do.

If you needed more capacity it'd be a blessing to have a little more headroom. Having 1G before and just moving to 2G and keeping DC will be a vast improvement. It may not even care there's another 1G in there even if it could run DC.

That's what I'd try first. Leave the old stick out and run the new pair for a while. Do what you do normally and then stick the 3rd stick in and feel it out.

[duffman03]

Good point, I'll do exactly that. Thanks for the responses!

[One4yu2c]

Originally Posted by polobunny

On the chipset more precisely. A7N8X is nForce 2, so maybe it was NF2 I was thinking about. Or maybe both. :P

Yup, it was NF2. Some (if not all) NF2 based boards broke it down as follows:

DIMM slot 1: Memory bank 1
DIMM slot 2: Memory bank 1
DIMM slot 3: Memory bank 2

IIRC, you had to match the amount of RAM in each memory bank (512MB in slot 1, 512MB in slot 2, and 1GB in slot 3, for example).

It's all moot now, as I don't believe there's a current board out there with the same 3-slot memory bank configuration (could be wrong).