2gb dual channel or 3gb single?

[cydewaze]

A while back I put together a PC out of some spare parts I had lying around, and a mobo and cpu that was on special from Microcenter. It's a Phenom II X2 and a Biostar A760 board and Win XP Home. I ordered 2GB of GSkill DDR2 1066 ram for it (2x1GB sticks), which is the fasted the board takes.

I put it together so I could play a couple of Windows games, but recently my office has enabled remote desktop access. This won't work with my primary PC (Linux) so I've found myself using the Win machine more and more.

I recently picked up a copy of Win7 professional, and want to go 64-bit. I'd like to add more ram, but there are only two slots. My options are as follows:

1) Stick with the current 2GB
2) Swap one of the 1GB sticks for a 2 and have 3GB but lose the dual channel
3) Toss both 1GB sticks and replace them with 2x2GB sticks.

Is it better to have the dual channel, or more ram?

 

[scottiemedic]

Get the 2x2gb, so you will have dual channel running.

 

[cydewaze]

That unfortunately leaves me with two perfectly good 1GB sticks and nothing to put them in. Oh well, I guess I could always ebay them.

 

[cydewaze]

Best answer selected by cydewaze.

 

[cydewaze]

I ended up ordering a 2x2gb dual channel kit, and the machine runs way better than it did with 2gb alone. As it turns out, my Linux machine uses the exact same ram (speed, brand, etc) and had two empty slots, so I threw the leftover ram in that and I now have 6gb.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr