1 stick vs. 2 sticks RAM for A7N8X DLX

[Digerati]

I've been having major problems with RAM compatibility with my new A7N8X DLX rev 2 bios 1005 (as can be seen in my posts on this forum).

The generic pc2700 with spectek chips caused occassional reboots and the Crucial pc2700 I bought to fix it caused reboots every 10 min. and tons and tons of errors in memtest86.

Anyhow, I'm now RMAing the Crucial and going to go with either the pc3200 Kingston RAM that is on the asus recommended list or some Corsair XMS pc3200 which I think is also on the asus recommended list for my board.

My question is, is it worth it to pay extra money for two sticks and use dual channel vs. just one stick of the same memory amount?

I only really need about 512mb of memory right now and it seems that gettings 1 stick of 512 is always cheaper than 2 sticks of 256 of the same brand.

So is the dual channel thing worth the extra money? I don't plan on overclocking or anything and I don't play any really hardcore games.

What shoudl I do?

 

[zoey]

I know everyone has their own reasons and opinions of having one or the other. I use 2 just in case 1 goes bad or you have to troubleshoot to see if it the RAM.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

I agree dont put all your eggs in one basket ... my two cents

 

[LeeJend]

If you have an nforce 2 chipset and use 2 sticks your memory bandwidth (speed) approximately doubles. GO for 2 sticks.

The previous reasons are also valid. It's nice to have 2 so you can swap them around for troubleshooting if the system starts getting flaky

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by Digerati
I've been having major problems with RAM compatibility with my new A7N8X DLX rev 2 bios 1005 (as can be seen in my posts on this forum).

The generic pc2700 with spectek chips caused occassional reboots and the Crucial pc2700 I bought to fix it caused reboots every 10 min. and tons and tons of errors in memtest86.

Anyhow, I'm now RMAing the Crucial and going to go with either the pc3200 Kingston RAM that is on the asus recommended list or some Corsair XMS pc3200 which I think is also on the asus recommended list for my board.

My question is, is it worth it to pay extra money for two sticks and use dual channel vs. just one stick of the same memory amount?

I only really need about 512mb of memory right now and it seems that gettings 1 stick of 512 is always cheaper than 2 sticks of 256 of the same brand.

So is the dual channel thing worth the extra money? I don't plan on overclocking or anything and I don't play any really hardcore games.

What shoudl I do?

all 4 of our a7n8x boards had the same problem with memory

it was certainly not expected...

anyways... we got 2 sticks of corsair XMS memory... for each...

you are then able to use dual channel DDR with the nforce2 board as well as not being limited by a possible bad stick of memory...

 

[Sazar]

Originally posted by LeeJend
If you have an nforce 2 chipset and use 2 sticks your memory bandwidth (speed) approximately doubles. GO for 2 sticks.

yes but it is more the memory bandwidth than anything else..

your memory bandwidth is increased... and with this bottleneck reduced... your computer will respond well...

 

[RobbieSan]

the above comment on doubling speed/bandwidth is not correct.. in fact, on AMD/Nf2 based machines the performance increase of Dual (DC) vs Single channel (SC) shows an insignificant increase in performance.. I had the same board with 2x Kingston HyperX 512MB PC3200.. Dual channel provided less than 5% increase in performance over single channel.. use Sisoft Sandra to test memory bandwidth of single vs dual channel and you will see for yourself..

regarding stability on the NF2 chipset many people have been running into this performance.. it seems that Nvidia's new stepping has not been updated in current memory modules and stability is a big issue right now.. I have read numerous posts in overclocking forums where users of all brands of RAM have stability issues..

having 2 sticks in case one goes bad is always good as is any redundant config..

because of the known issues between RAM and NF2 chipset, and knowing DC with AMD/Nf2 is insignificant, I have opted for a new Giigabyte A7VAX-A (KT400A) which shows very close performance to DC...