Fixing my weird ram setup

[geoffry]

I currently have a s939 athlon 64 system I am upgrading.

When the builder put it together he put in 1.5 gigs (no idea why).

It is 1 x 512 MB and a 1 GB stick.

If I throw in another 512 MB, would it be in dual channel mode? Or for dual channel mode do all the sticks need to be the same?

And the performance increase in dual channel mode, I read somewhere that it is only around a 5% increase, is that correct?

Thanks.

 

[eagles453809]

yeah, if the motherboard has 4 dimm slots, then throwing in another 512 will make the ram run in dual channel mode as long as the other 3 sticks are dual channel. if not then they will run in single channel.

p.s. the performance in dual channel over single is noticable, especially in gaming and video/audio encoding/decoding.

 

[misry]

Match one or the other, I would do the 1G, and remove the odd man. You can then match the 512 as budget permits.

It's either dual channel or not. If you match one and leave the other in place none of them will go dual. If you leave the one out and match it later you'll have 2 "banks" of dual or as I like to think of it in my setup, dual dual channel.

 

[eagles453809]

oops your right...i misread that, he has 1x512 and 1x1gb....like he said go with the 2x512 or 2x1gb, if you have the money, go with the 1gb.

 

[sirrobin4ever]

There should be two sets of two ram slots. They should be named bank 0 and bank 1. (or maybe bank 1 and bank 2) If the amount of ram in bank 0 is the same as the amount of ram in bank 1, the am will run in dual channel mode.

ie- bank 0 has 2x512 mb, and
bank 1 has 1x1024 mb
This setup WILL run in Dual Channel.

As a rule of thumb, identical ram sticks have a better chance of being compatible, but any high quality ram should have no problem running in this setup.

Best of Luck

 

[geoffry]

Thanks for all the quick responses and info guys.

 

[eagles453809]

no problem my friend, thats what the forums are here for. good luck with your setup.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

When the builder put it together he put in 1.5 gigs (no idea why).

I betcha I know why! Because he had a 1GB stick and a 512MB stick just laying around and wanted to offload them on someone for a decent price (for himself and probably not for you). Yes it's a very apathetic view, but in my experience, when it comes to money, that's how the world works.

-mcg