RAM in dual channel should be more bandwidth right?

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SportyGuy220

Gawd
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Jun 9, 2004
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Im just wanting to know the exact benifits of using ram in dual channel. Please list all the benifits and how they work together as compared in asyncronous mode. I also want to know the speed difference if i ran 2x256 in one channel and 512 in the other channel compared to 2x512. In both situations, dual channel is being used.
 
Dual channel is useless in an Athlon XP system for one because the 32-bit Athlons only have 64-bit memory controllers.. Also, running async in Athlon XP systems actually decreases your performance because the async controllers are worthless. Pentium 4 chips benefit from dual channel though, and they don't suffer as much of a performance decrease in async since their async controllers are actually worth something.

I would conjecture to say running in sync, having two DIMM slots filled would yield nearly the same performance as having all three filled, though I'd rather just go for having two slots of 512 MB if given a choice.
 
your saying that in amd computers that dual channel is worthless and actually decreases performance? Synchronous=dual channel, async= single channel.
 
Asynchronous means running your RAM at a different speed than your CPU front side bus speed. That will decrease performance and in some cases actually cause problems like crashes.

Dual channel is worthless in regular old 32-bit Athlons; it nets you maybe 2% gain tops over single channel, barely noticeable.
 
Dual Channel gives some memory bandwidth increase, but the thing is, most these 32bit AMD chipsets are designed to give the data from the RAM to the CPU as fast as most CPUS can handle it in the first place. Dual channel is like a slight bonus for them.
Look at intel, using nearly all of what dual channel has to offer...
Look how the single-channel 754-socket A64's are still whupping their asses.
 
The Athlon XP's front side bus is dual pumped, so the effective speed is double the actual speed, just like DDR memory. So at 266 Mhz FSB, the AThlon XP is limited to 2.1 GB/s, the bandwidth limit of PC2100 RAM. If you use dual channel PC2100, then theoretically, you can get 4.2 GB/s right? Well, in the Athlon XP's case, this is not the case. Think of it like a 4 lane highway that becomes a 2 lane highway because of the Athlon XP's FSB. Thus, the extra bandwidth from dual channel is really used at all.

Athlon XP dual channel is like AGP 8x and ATA/133: mostly marketing ploys to attract people.
 
I agree with the above posters.

I ran dual channel in one of my test machines and actually got 30 points less in 3d mark with dual channel enabled.
 
30 points in 3DMark is within the margin of error unless it was over repeated tests.
 
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