Dual channel effect on 3D performance?

[meltdown75]

Hi all. I was just wondering to what extent adding another 512mb of ram to my system would affect 3D performance in applications such as 3dmark or say, Half Life 2? specs in sig. thanks! :beer:

 

[boyRacer]

Probably 5 more frames... from the dual channel that is not from more RAM.

 

[jiffylube1024]

It doesn't do much of anything on Nforce 2 - 0-2%. I tested this exact situation (512MB > 1024MB) on my NF7-S 2.0 with a 3200+ and it made no difference even in synthetic tests.

You will get a benefit from having double the RAM in games like HL2 but dual channel on an NF2 doesn't improve performance by itself - only for integrated graphics (which suck, anyways).

 

[Pete]

3DMark03/05, no, as they're mainly GPU-limited. 3DM01SE and games, maybe, as they're perhaps more CPU-limited. Dual-channel may help feed the CPU, but I don't think the Athlon XP was designed to use that much bandwidth, anyway. Dual channel on nF2 mainly benefits the IGP, AFAIK.

 

[meltdown75]

thanks

 

[Gamingphreek]

Pete is correct the AXP was only designed to use 3.2 gig of bandwidth whereas the P4's IIRC could use as much as given (commonly 6.4) so AMD would occasionally get performance improvements however Intel really took the full benefit of it.

-Kevin

 

[zerocool84]

ahh fooey i spent all that extra money getting dual channel for nutin, o well at least i can say i have it eh?

 

[BFG10K]

It doesn't do much of anything on Nforce 2 - 0-2%.

Of course not, the nForce2 doesn't even support dual channel RAM for the CPU, it's only for onboard video. Only socket 939 platforms fully support dual channel memory.