Motherboard with DualDDR?

[andrewjm]

I am looking at the Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, and I see it has DualDDR. To take advantage of this, do I need 2 sticks that are identical? How exactly does DualDDR work? And is it that much of an improvement?

 

[bgeh]

To take advantage of this, do I need 2 sticks that are identical?

yes you do.

How exactly does DualDDR work?

it breaks a data block into 2 and then each of the data block is then transferred into a stick of ram each.
kinda works like raid 0.
so the bandwidth is theorectically doubled.

And is it that much of an improvement?

since you're looking at an AMD mobo, i would say little to no difference.this is because amd athlon xp's fsb is at 333mhz whose bandwidth can be supplied by ddr 333.

 

[mechBgon]

nForce2 has the ability to use some of the excess bandwidth for pre-fetching data it predicts the CPU will ask for next, which is a help in some situations. Look at how much dual DDR boosts performance over single DDR in SPEC: Look at the blue numbers in the chart The extra bandwidth can also help when devices need direct access to system memory alongside the CPU's own requests, with the onboard video core in the IGP boards being the prime example.

 

[Regalk]

Noticed Anandtech mentioned an ATA Registry patch for the IDE - anyone know where I can find this patch??

 

[mechBgon]

I'm guessing the patch is in the nForce/nForce2 2.0 unified driver set, which came out between then and now IIRC.