Dual DDR?

[snidy]

I'm planning on getting the Asus Nforce A7N8x, I don't know much about dual DDR, would it be better to get two 256 mb ram, or one 512 mb?

 

[halkebul]

Two quality DDR400+ modules. Put them in the blue slots of the motherboard. At least DDR400 for the sake of overclocking and future upgrades.

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Whatever speed of RAM you choose, you'll get a performance increase from using two modules. The only real issue is future upgradablility - are you likely to want to upgrade to 1Gb RAM in the future?

 

[snidy]

I might get two 512 mb, it's a little spendy though. so I'll probably start with one.

 

[Lord Evermore]

The price delta from 333MHz to 400MHz DDR memory for a small performance gain is far too great for someone who doesn't even care about the improvements of dual-channel memory (especially given the requirement of VERY good quality 400MHz modules to avoid performance reduction due to less agressive timings than would be possible with 333MHz). Dual-channel 333MHz would be quite sufficient I'm sure, and only slightly more expensive than 266MHz memory.

Why are you getting an nForce2 motherboard if you're not considering it for the high performance, which comes largely from the dual-channel memory? Actually, I don't know if anyone has compared an nForce/nForce2 board to itself with dual and single channel memory performance in any review, but I haven't read many nForce reviews, either. For a very much lower price, you can get a decent-performing board, unless you're dead-set on the sound options on an nForce2 board.

For that matter, I'm not sure which Soyo board you're referring to in your signature. Soyo has a couple of "Dragon Plus" models. I assume you mean the KT266A model, otherwise there'd be no reason at all to upgrade.

 

[compudog]

I have the Asus A7N8X mobo with two 256 MB Cosair PC2700 modules. I populated both of the blue slots for the dual channel mode. There is not much of a performance difference IMHO between dual-channel and regular mode. I have tried a lot of different apps (Photoshop 7.0, NOLF2, MOHAA, RtCW, MS Office 2K) and the machine runs very well in either configuration. I may try some overclocking in the future, but I want to get my 'work' done before I start fiddling around.

I guess, go with the 2 256 MB DIMMs unless you forsee needing 1GB of ram and have the $$ to spend.