Dual vs. Single Channel on A64, 2x512MB vs. 1GB

[Dethfrumbelo]

I don't care about memory benchmarks - of course they're going to say dual channel has ~2x the bandwidth of single channel. In real world applications, especially games, there's virtually no performance gain.

The question is - would one be better off running a high quality TCCD overclocker (OCZ 3200 platinum rev 2 for example) at 300+ MHz in single channel mode or at 275 MHz in dual channel mode? I've been looking for benches but haven't been able to find any. It'd be nice to have some hard numbers.

And what about using one 1 GB stick vs 2 512 MB sticks? Would you need to set CMD to 2T to get the 1GB stick to work?

Thanks.

 

[stelleg151]

Dual channel does give some gaming performance, the 3200+ 939(Dual Channel) is the same clock speed as the 3000+ 754(Single Channel) and it performs significantly better. You should give some info on your rig, but if you have a proc and board that can handle dual channel, then use it by all means. Two stick of TCCD in dual channel at 275 will smoke one stick at 300 in real life performance. Lets say dual channel give about a 60 percent increase in performance over single channel, which it does. 275*1.6= 440, and 440>300. As for the 1gb sticks, I believe that due to the density they generally are run at 2T, and with slower timings, around 3-3-3-8. This is another reason to get two sticks of 512, as they can run at 1T, with faster timings.