Dual channel?

[Arde]

1) Could someone please explain me why is it better to have two memory modules if the motherboard has dual channel?

2) Does my motherboard (MSI KT4AV) have it?

 

[ChipDeath]

1)
Because Dual Channel motherboards have 2 memory controllers to 'share the load', so rather than requests from the rest of the system being 'queued up', they can be split between the two controllers, so theoretically doubling the available bandwidth. So on a P4 800FSB system, Dual channel DDR400 in theory matches the FSB of the chip and helps performance, because it's 200Mhz (400DDR) x2 = 800, which is the same as the CPU's 200Mhz (800QDR) bus. In Athlon systems there is very little advantage as the CPU bus is DDR, so DDR400 is already in synch with the bus.

2)
No. The only DC solution for Athlon XPs is the nforce2 chipset, and yours is the VIA KT400a chipset.

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