DDR, Dual Channel motherboards, plz explain

RallosZek

Member
Oct 28, 2003
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Hi what the title says, can someone point me in the direction of an explanation of the different speeds of DDR ram, the motherboards and how/if they mix/match speeds, if they drop the speed of the higher etc,

and what dual channel does. i've been out of the loop for a while

Thanks
 

egale

Senior member
Jun 5, 2002
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Dual channel ram allows for faster memory access because two banks of ram are interleaved. Both banks must have identical sticks or else the motherboard will run in single channel mode. From what I understand, dual channel mode is a lot more beneficial to Intel systems.

As for speed, this is more dependent of your fsb. The C Intel processors which run at 800fsb require PC3200/DDR 400 as a minimum. If you overclock and run your fsb at a higher speed, faster memory is required. This is assumming you are running the memory at a 1:1 ratio. The only reason for using memory rated at higher than PC3200 right now is for overclocking.