What the heck is dual channel ddr?

[olrac]

I have a gig of ddr 2100 ram. Whats this dual channel stuff? I just bought a 512 stick of ddr, what makes it dual channel? Or do you need a certain chipset to benefit from this feature?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Sounds like your getting confused.
DDR ram is Dual Data rate... Data is transmitted twice on each clock cycle, theoretically getting twice the memory bandwidth compared to SDR.

Dual channel memory is different again. Instead of having one memory path from the northbridge to the ram there are two parallel ones, giving the user twice the memory bandwidth of just one path.
But to use Dual Channel memory you need:
A. A dual channel motherboard (Nforce, Nforce2, i7205, i850 etc)
B. Two Identical sticks of DDR or RD RAM.

Dual channel motherboards are also more complex to design and produce as there has to be twice the number of paths from the memory to the chipset.

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[Crashman]

Dual Channel means your motherboard can use the modules in pairs. There is nothing special about the modules themselves.

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