2 GB Dual Channel vs 2.5 Single Channel Advice?

mastermind1297

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Jan 12, 2010
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So I've decided to add some ram to my old motherboard. I am about to put in two 1 GB DDR sticks

and my question is would it be faster to put the old 512 MB is the third slot even though it would be

reduced to single channel.

Any advice would help and be appreciated.
 
Solution
Since there seems to be a difference of opinion, I suggest the OP try it both ways. With the wei, you sometimes get strange results. Run superpi or some other cpu benchmark to assess the difference between dual and single channel. Some older amd chips are more sensitive to ram performance compared to the newer nehalem chips.

petefbi

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Dec 31, 2009
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From my own experience, where for a while I could only get 3 of the 4 banks to work, I'd say no.
My Win7 scores with memory with different combinations in the slots were;

1-512mb, 2-512mb 3-empty, 4-empty ... score = 4.4 (Dual)
1-1gb, 2-1gb, 3-empty, 4-empty ... score = 5.4 (Dual)
1-1gb, 2-1gb, 3-512mb, 4-empty ... score = 4.1 (Single)

Much better to be Dual.
 
Since there seems to be a difference of opinion, I suggest the OP try it both ways. With the wei, you sometimes get strange results. Run superpi or some other cpu benchmark to assess the difference between dual and single channel. Some older amd chips are more sensitive to ram performance compared to the newer nehalem chips.
 
Solution