What is Dual/Tri-Channel memory?

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Someone Somewhere
It means that your memory controller (the bit that talks to the memory) can 'talk' to two, three, or four things at once.

Think of it like a telephone line, in that the one cable is connected to several different phones. Each phone line is a stick of RAM, and each line is a channel. Only one stick can talk at a time per channel, but because there's multiple lines, you can talk to several sticks at once, speeding it up.
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Someone Somewhere

Someone Somewhere

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Sep 23, 2012
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It means that your memory controller (the bit that talks to the memory) can 'talk' to two, three, or four things at once.

Think of it like a telephone line, in that the one cable is connected to several different phones. Each phone line is a stick of RAM, and each line is a channel. Only one stick can talk at a time per channel, but because there's multiple lines, you can talk to several sticks at once, speeding it up.
 
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Sn1992-1361850

Sn1992-1361850

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Jul 13, 2013
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multi-channel memory architecture is a technology that increases the transfer speed of data between the DRAM memory and the chipset memory controller by adding more channels of communication between them. Theoretically this multiplies the data rate by exactly the number of channels present. Dual-channel memory employs two channels which theoretically doubles the data transfer rate.



dual channel
Dual-channel-enabled memory controllers in a PC system architecture utilize two 64-bit data channels. Dual channel should not be confused with double data rate (DDR), in which data exchange happens twice per DRAM clock. The two technologies are independent of each other and many motherboards use both, by using DDR memory in a dual-channel configuration.


tripple channel
DDR3 triple-channel architecture is used in the Intel Core i7-900 series (the Intel Core i7-800 series only support up to dual-channel). The LGA 1366 platform (e.g. Intel X58) supports DDR3 triple-channel, normally 1333 and 1600Mhz, but can run at higher clock speeds on certain motherboards. AMD Socket AM3 processors do not use the DDR3 triple-channel architecture but instead use dual-channel DDR3 memory. The same applies to the Intel Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7-800 series, which are used on the LGA 1156 platforms (e.g., Intel P55). According to Intel, a Core i7 with DDR3 operating at 1066 MHz will offer peak data transfer rates of 25.6 GB/s when operating in triple-channel interleaved mode. This, Intel claims, leads to faster system performance as well as higher performance per watt.
 
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kaio37k

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That cleared it up :D Thanks!
So to be clear, the 'dual/tri' channel depends on the Mobo's capabilities too not only RAM?
 
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