does dual channel ram help in games

[TanisHalfElven]

i just upgraded to 2gig ram using a 2x1 GB kit. now i have an optiopn.

3gb non-dual channel
2 gb dual channel

which one would give me better performance at games. specifically games coming out in the next year or so.

 

[Diogenes2]

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
i just upgraded to 2gig ram using a 2x1 GB kit. now i have an optiopn.

3gb non-dual channel
2 gb dual channel

which one would give me better performance at games. specifically games coming out in the next year or so.

I don't see any game in the near future benefiting from 3gb system RAM ( vs 2gb ) , but your overall system performance will definitely suffer from single channel vs dual ..

 

[TheRyuu]

I'd just keep the 2GB kit since no game right now is gonna use more then that.

Maybe in the future, but deal with that when the time comes since RAM prices always seem to be going down.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: wizboy11
I'd just keep the 2GB kit since no game right now is gonna use more then that.

Maybe in the future, but deal with that when the time comes since RAM prices always seem to be going down.

unfortunaly DDR prices aren't going down at all. DDR2 is low but DDR is stable at about 35 per 512.

edit.
Oh yeah and thanks for the replies. i think i'll sell the 512 sticks or give them to my family as "GIFTs"

 

[BFG10K]

Go with dual-channel.

 

[aka1nas]

2GB is still ok on XP and dual channel gives a small to fair performance increase in many games.

You have 2x1GB and 2x512MB sticks? You can use all 4 in dual channel still if so. You will have to run 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's only a small hit in real world apps.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
2GB is still ok on XP and dual channel gives a small to fair performance increase in many games.

You have 2x1GB and 2x512MB sticks? You can use all 4 in dual channel still if so. You will have to run 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's only a small hit in real world apps.

unfortunately my 2x512 aren't identical. one has all chips on one side other does not.

 

[Acanthus]

Id stay with dual channel 2GB, even in vista.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven

Originally posted by: aka1nas
2GB is still ok on XP and dual channel gives a small to fair performance increase in many games.

You have 2x1GB and 2x512MB sticks? You can use all 4 in dual channel still if so. You will have to run 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's only a small hit in real world apps.

unfortunately my 2x512 aren't identical. one has all chips on one side other does not.

Did you try all 4 anyway? It's probably iffy if one stick has 2 banks and the other one, but I've gotten pretty strange combinations of sticks to work in dual channel.

I had 4x512MB sticks previously and each stick had a different speed or CAS rating.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven

Originally posted by: aka1nas
2GB is still ok on XP and dual channel gives a small to fair performance increase in many games.

You have 2x1GB and 2x512MB sticks? You can use all 4 in dual channel still if so. You will have to run 2T command rate instead of 1T, but that's only a small hit in real world apps.

unfortunately my 2x512 aren't identical. one has all chips on one side other does not.

Did you try all 4 anyway? It's probably iffy if one stick has 2 banks and the other one, but I've gotten pretty strange combinations of sticks to work in dual channel.

I had 4x512MB sticks previously and each stick had a different speed or CAS rating.

Mixing different speeds and CAS ratings should always work -- the BIOS is supposed to set everything to the speed of the slowest modules (unless you force it to something else). DDR/DDR2 should always be downwards compatible in speed. Different chip densities should work if the memory controller supports it (the A64/Opterion controllers and the more recent Intel chipsets are pretty forgiving; older ones, maybe not so much). You may have to have the same density for all the chips on one channel.

IIRC, dual-channel is something like a 5-10% improvement in real-world performance when you're not GPU-bound (it puts your synthetic memory benches through the roof, but games at reasonable framerates aren't solely bound by bandwidth). If you look up memory overclocking benchmarks you can get some idea of the differences as your scale memory bandwidth.