512 Dual or 1GB

[Shooks]

I was just wondering, I have a Chaintech 7NJS Ultra ZENITH mobo and it has 3 RAM slots. I have two 256 sticks now running dual channel, and I wanted to know if I throw a 512 Stick in the 3rd slot, will it hurt or harm performance.

 

[jswjimmy]

good for video/picture editing, bad for gaming

 

[Boogak]

Originally posted by: jswjimmy
good for video/picture editing, bad for gaming

I disagree. The Athlon XP processor doesn't benefit that much from dual channel memory bandwidth and he's not using onboard graphics, so it shouldn't hurt gaming. The 1GB total memory in fact would immensely benefit newer games that eat up alot of memory.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: Boogak

Originally posted by: jswjimmy
good for video/picture editing, bad for gaming

I disagree. The Athlon XP processor doesn't benefit that much from dual channel memory bandwidth and he's not using onboard graphics, so it shouldn't hurt gaming. The 1GB total memory in fact would immensely benefit newer games that eat up alot of memory.

Ditto. NF2 + dual channel = <5% performance increase.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Shooks
I was just wondering, I have a Chaintech 7NJS Ultra ZENITH mobo and it has 3 RAM slots. I have two 256 sticks now running dual channel, and I wanted to know if I throw a 512 Stick in the 3rd slot, will it hurt or harm performance.

Its do-able and seems to help. Here's a thread on it (its a NF7 type thread, but its the same chipset so s/b relevant).
Link to Third Stick of Ram in DC nForce mobos

 

[CraigRT]

go for the larger quantity of RAM