Dual Channel using 4 slots?

[digerati]

Just upgraded to an athlon64 3000+ on a Chaintech vf4 ultra mobo. I migrated my 2 sticks of 512mb Geil PC3200 RAM over and everything is working well.

My question is, I'm thinking of getting an additional 2 sticks of the Geil 512mb RAM to fill out my 4 RAM slots and upgrade the total ram to 2GB.

Does anyone know if Dual Channel will work in that configuration, or will it only work when only 2 sticks are used and not four?

Does dual channel really make a significant performance difference? Will doubling my current RAM surpass the loss of dual channel capability?

Thanks

 

[j79zlr]

Dual channel with work with 4 sticks, in fact it will work better.

 

[digerati]

I just checked the manual for my mobo and it seems to say that of the 4 RAM slots built into the mobo, only 2 can ever be used at one time? Am I right in concluding this? I've attached the section of the manual that mentions this below.

If it actually is the case, why even bother to include 4 slots? and it seems to imply that it is the CPU that is at fault. is that true?

 

[j79zlr]

hmm, thats odd, usually if they have four slots, they are designed to run dual channel across all four, otherwise they usually have 3 slots, where 1+3 are dual channel and 1+2 are not.

 

[digerati]

So is my only option then to sell my current sticks of RAM and get 2 sticks of 1GB each?

That would really suck as one stick of 1GB RAM costs about an extra $30-$50 compared to two sticks of 512mb RAM of the same brand.

I'm just confused why Chaintech would even bother including 4 RAM slots and saying that the motherboard can accomidate a max. of 4GB of RAM.

 

[j79zlr]

I don't think you need 2GB of RAM, you probably wont notice any different between 1GB and 2GB

 

[zeke_mo]

I ordered an extra gig of ram for one of my comp, and it made the cpu score go down in benchmarks (athlon64 3500+) So if you are using EXTREME photoshop, or any media editing/creating you wont be needing it. It was fun to see 1700MB free in taskmanger though

 

[j79zlr]

1700MB free = 1700 MB wasted

 

[digerati]

I sent an email to Chaintech support asking them if it was possible to load DDR400 RAM in all 4 slots, here was the reply:


yes you can. not recommended due to AMD limitation. it will lower the
CPU
speed.

Have a great day!

Regards

Chaintech America Corp.
Customer Service Dept.
FAX510)656-2297



so i guess you can, just shouldn't. somehow this just seems kind of silly from a design perspective, but what do I know.

Anyhow, my reason for wanting to upgrade to 2GB is that I'm a gamer and thought it might be useful for the latest and greatest games on the horizon, not really needed though. Mainly was just curious.

Thanks!

 

[zeke_mo]

1700MB free = 1700 MB wasted

Yeah yeah, I took the extra RAM out and am using it in another computer. In order to make up for 4 DIMMS I have to OC 200Mhz. I dont know if I'm ready for the jump again

 

[Aprox]

This maybe slightly off topic, but I have been reading about the new 90nm San Diego and Venice core AMD's and they are talking about how they have improved the memory controller and improved compatibility with memory (especially 4 DIMMs)

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20050310212502.html

Just do a google search for more information.