Is dual channel worth it in my scenario?

[rishooty]

I was just considering buying another 2GB stick of ram to run dual channel, when i found that the overall price of DDR2 800(6400) 2GB sticks pretty much doubled in the past 6 months . When i originally bought this stick: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134581 it was $20(wasn't on sale or had any special deal either) and now its more than double. If you read the comments I'm not the only one complaining either.

I already have 3GB of ram, one stick from the link and the other is stock. My board only has 2 slots. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit so any more has a great chance of not being read, though i hear in some cases 32 bit can go up to 4GB.

However, I'm thinking about buying it anyway just so i can have dual channel regardless of the fact that my OS might waste ram. I am considering this because i know the fact that memory is heavily linked to the processor as well as everything else so running dual channel can increase the overall performance of your computer. But the question is, is it worth 50 bucks? [for gaming in particular]

 

[JDFan]

What MOBO do you have and does it support dual channel? -- you are correct that a 32 bit OS will only support 4GB. total which you have to subtract the amount reserved for the system and peripherals including the GPU which leaves only approx 3.25GB of useable space for the RAM so you'll only gain about 256Mb of useable memory for the $50

 

[rishooty]

M2N68-LA (Ivy8) [google it, i would send you a link but every hp related link goes right to their store for some reason]

memory specs:
Dual channel memory architecture
Two 240-pin DDR2 DIMM sockets
Supported DIMM types:
PC2-4200 (533 MHz)
PC2-5300 (667 MHz)
PC2-6400 (800 MHz)
Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
Supports 2GB DDR2 DIMMs
Supports up to 4 GB*
32 bit PCs cannot address a full 4.0 GB of memory.

That is my board. Yeah i know its pretty bad, but building on top of a cheap pc is the only thing i could do at the time due to various reasons lol. But yes it does in fact support dual channel as seen in the memory section.

And yeah i thought it wouldn't gain anything memory wise, I just want to get the most out of my Amd Athlon X2 6000+ and am just curious to see if dual channel really does improve performance, fps wise, at all.