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| Thread ID: 82625 | 2007-09-02 23:06:00 | how much speed drop if I loose Dual-channel? | heni72847 (1166) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 587148 | 2007-09-02 23:06:00 | I think 512Mb of RAM is seriously not enough for me so I want to bump it into 1Gb the computer's oldish now (Athlon XP 2000+), and I don't want to spend too much money on it, so I thought 1Gb would do right now I have two 256Mb Transcend PC2700/DDR333 DDR SD-RAM running in Dual-channel mode because I don't want to spend too much money I simply want to buy a 512Mb stick and put it in to give me a total of 1Gb but by doing so I'll loose the Dual-channel so the main question is.. will the speed difference be noticeable? from loosing dual-channel? my computer isn't very fast.. don't really want to make it even slower also now PC3200/DDR400 RAM are cheaper than DDR333, so I'll probably get those the new RAM should drop its speed and play nicely right? and I've also spotted a Transcend one at a cheap price to try to help minimize compatibility issues. So..suggestions please~ okay to kill dual-channel? okay to buy a faster ram and make it run slow? ...I just need to confirm these |
heni72847 (1166) | ||
| 587149 | 2007-09-02 23:13:00 | I think the benefit of double the ram will out weight the negative effect of dropping from dual to single channel ram...... Ram is always faster than HDD's so yes, your pc will respond alot better with the added RAM. |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 587150 | 2007-09-03 02:02:00 | um..googled a bit and can't really find benchmark on non/dual-channel tom's hardware suggests that AMD systems not as much affected without dual-channel (?) I'm no expert regarding to RAM sync and timing and stuff..hope I didn't misinterpret the article I was reading also stumbled upon high density and low density RAM, and one sided or double sided RAM should I really be concerned about those? |
heni72847 (1166) | ||
| 587151 | 2007-09-03 02:21:00 | heni, just get generic DDR400 /PC3200 RAM, your chipset will step the RAM down to the older speed RAM to match your existing..... Disclaimer....not all chipsets will step the RAM, most but not all..... |
SolMiester (139) | ||
| 587152 | 2007-09-03 03:17:00 | I have done this. I had trouble and to ensure it was not the ram module I pulled one out at a time and then put them both back in, in none dual mode. The lose of speed when reading/writing to memory is almost but not quite 1/2 the speed in none dual channel as it is in dual channel. It really depends on how much you work the ram but the speed decrease will be noticeable. It certainly was in mine. |
Big John (551) | ||
| 587153 | 2007-09-03 03:26:00 | I have done this. I had trouble and to ensure it was not the ram module I pulled one out at a time and then put them both back in, in none dual mode. The lose of speed when reading/writing to memory is almost but not quite 1/2 the speed in none dual channel as it is in dual channel. It really depends on how much you work the ram but the speed decrease will be noticeable. It certainly was in mine. Thats very interesting Big John, was your system Intel or AMD? AMD responds to tight timings and low latency, the reason they shifted their memory controller on die and the exact reason why AMD gain minimal performance gain when they recently upgraded to a DDR2 memory. An Intel system would be much more likely to drop in performance when going from dual channel to single channel. Both the P4 and C2D respond better to high bandwidth, in particular Quad Cores, the FSB is bottlenecking communication between the CPU and northbridge. On an AthlonXP system it is very unlikely that you would notice any difference between single and dual channel. On a previous occasion when messing with memory, i ran my aging 2100+ and 2x 512 stick in single channel and noticed no difference. Of little interest to most but still worth mentioning is that alot of early dual channel platforms often overclocked better when in single channel. |
Pete O'Neil (6584) | ||
| 587154 | 2007-09-03 03:52:00 | right now I have two 256Mb Transcend PC2700/DDR333 DDR SD-RAM running in Dual-channel mode because I don't want to spend too much money I simply want to buy a 512Mb stick and put it in to give me a total of 1Gb but by doing so I'll loose the Dual-channel so the main question is.. will the speed difference be noticeable? from loosing dual-channel? You may not lose Dual Channel if you have the same amount of memory in each channel ie 2x 256 in one and the 512 in the other. It depends on the MB maker. The speed difference isn't very nuch. There was 1 socket 462 MB that came out in a single channel only version that was faster than the dual channel capable ones. |
PaulD (232) | ||
| 587155 | 2007-09-03 09:13:00 | my motherboard has three RAM slots I've used two of them and I'm going to add new RAM to the third slot not sure how the slots equate to channels though good to hear that AthlonXP won't experience a serious speed drop hopefully Big John had a Intel cpu~ |
heni72847 (1166) | ||
| 587156 | 2007-09-03 21:18:00 | Thats very interesting Big John, was your system Intel or AMD? Intel P4 at the time. Was having issues with crashes. In the end I had to slow the memory access speed down a notch to get the PC stable. In Dual channel it was still much faster and noticable. |
Big John (551) | ||
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