stupid question about dual channel

[soup or man]

i've got an intel board with 4 slots for memory. I'm currently running 2 sticks of 256MB PC3200 in dual channel mode. If i were to add an additional stick of 512MB to my 2nd or fourth slot(1 and 3 are my dual channel slots) would it ruin the gains i'm getting for having my dual channel set up? would it work at all? the stuff i have in there is cas 2.0 mushkin blue, i'd probably just buy another stick of cas 2.0 somethin' or other.

i'm not very happy with only 512MB and this seems like the easiest way to up it to 1GB. Am I better off just buying something like a $90 dual channel cas 2.5 corsair value kit?

 

[imported_Kensai]

I'd suggest that you get two sticks of some discounted stuff and stuff it in your extra slots and hope for the best.

 

[soup or man]

well i seem to recall my other 2 slots aren't dual channel. i'm really only interested in having 1GB, i'm just wondering if putting an additional stick of 512MB in one of my other slots is going to like "cancel out" my 256MB dual channel sticks.

 

[Peter]

Of course the dual channel arrangement is 2x2 slots. There are no other RAM slots on the chipset, where else should the extra slots come from?

 

[soup or man]

ok, so if i were to put another 2 sticks of 256MB in my #2 and #4 slots they would also be dual channel?

 

[Peter]

The DIMMs aren't what's dual channel. The slots are. Place matching DIMM pairs into pairing slots, and there you go.

 

[soup or man]

perfect, thanks for you help!