Three sticks of ram in 939?

[Zebo]

What happens with dual channel? What happens period with form and function?

 

[imported_Computer MAn]

If you put three sticks of ram in a 939 board you will lose dual channel. But on a A64 dual channel only gives you a 3-5% increase anyway.

 

[Zebo]

Whoa is this true? you 100%?

 

[klah]

From the Gigabyte manual: "The GA-K8NSNXP-939 doesn't support 3 memory modules. If 3 memory modules are inserted,
the system will not boot."

The Abit AV8 manual does not show support for 3 dimms either.

 

[Zebo]

wtf

 

[Concillian]

Wow, that sucks. In the nForce2 boards, 2x256 + 1x512 works just great in dual channel. I would have thought it would work the same in nForce3 boards.

On a side note does anyone know how that kind of a setup would work on a S754 board? 1 512 MB (double sided) + 2 256 MB (single sided). I know 3 double sided is not officially supported, but what about 1 double sided + 2 single sided.

 

[Ronin]

My MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum supports up to 4, and will happily run with all 4 slots filled 🙂

 

[klah]

Originally posted by: Concillian
Wow, that sucks. In the nForce2 boards, 2x256 + 1x512 works just great in dual channel. I would have thought it would work the same in nForce3 boards.

On a side note does anyone know how that kind of a setup would work on a S754 board? 1 512 MB (double sided) + 2 256 MB (single sided). I know 3 double sided is not officially supported, but what about 1 double sided + 2 single sided.

With s754 you can use 3 DS dimms at 166MHz@2T or 100MHz@1T. The only configuration where 3 dimms are officially supported at 200MHz is when using 3 SS dimms @2T. 1DS + 2SS is supported at 166MHz.

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: Ronin
My MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum supports up to 4, and will happily run with all 4 slots filled 🙂

And is it running dual channel. And what mem effciency inside sandra?

 

[Ronin]

http://server.counter-strike.net/images/misc/fx53-3.png

I actually have better scores than that, but that's a good one to reference.

 

[Zebo]

Hella nice...Should I ignore the decenting views above? What sticks are those?


It's obviously sporting DC at those bandwidths...although effiency is'nt NF2ish @ 96%..who cares though..

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: Concillian
Wow, that sucks. In the nForce2 boards, 2x256 + 1x512 works just great in dual channel. I would have thought it would work the same in nForce3 boards.

On a side note does anyone know how that kind of a setup would work on a S754 board? 1 512 MB (double sided) + 2 256 MB (single sided). I know 3 double sided is not officially supported, but what about 1 double sided + 2 single sided.

there is no dual channel on nforce 2 boards. actually, dual channel doesnt even exist on any amd socket besides socket 939, and the memory performance increase is only about 2-3% max.

also, dual channel, when applicable, only works with two sticks of ram. any more or less will take the benefits of dual channel away.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
there is no dual channel on nforce 2 boards. actually, dual channel doesnt even exist on any amd socket besides socket 939, and the memory performance increase is only about 2-3% max.

also, dual channel, when applicable, only works with two sticks of ram. any more or less will take the benefits of dual channel away.

That's funny, because when I boot it says "Dual Channel"

and the performance is significantly better measured via Sandra (I know, you can't play Sandra). Point being that it shows some difference meaning I AM in dual channel.

nForce 2 definitely DOES support dual channel:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nf2_eg.html

Incorporating dual 400 MHz DDR memory controllers, a 128-bit architecture, and 400MHz frontside bus (FSB) support

My manual also clearly states that three DIMMs populated run Dual channel. And they do in my case.
You can check if you want:
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/m...2/a7n8x-e/C18E1008.zip Page 2-9
It says nothing about needing to be the same size, etc... In my case I have 2x256 in one channel and 1x512 in the other, so each channel is balanced, but I can vouch that it works fine with 3x256 as well. Probably doesn't work optimally with 256 in one channel and 512 in the other, but it should at least work dual channel for 512 MB of it.

 

[charloscarlies]

Originally posted by: Mik3y

Originally posted by: Concillian
Wow, that sucks. In the nForce2 boards, 2x256 + 1x512 works just great in dual channel. I would have thought it would work the same in nForce3 boards.

On a side note does anyone know how that kind of a setup would work on a S754 board? 1 512 MB (double sided) + 2 256 MB (single sided). I know 3 double sided is not officially supported, but what about 1 double sided + 2 single sided.

there is no dual channel on nforce 2 boards. actually, dual channel doesnt even exist on any amd socket besides socket 939, and the memory performance increase is only about 2-3% max.

also, dual channel, when applicable, only works with two sticks of ram. any more or less will take the benefits of dual channel away.

ummm....yes there is. 🙂

 

[Mik3y]

dual channel as no effect on socket A and 754 dude, meaning no effect on nForce 2. it doesnt matter if it says dual channel. the fact that its in dual channel position doesnt mean it has any benefitted dual channel performance. also, dual channel does not work with 3 dimms!

 

[Concillian]

Socket 754 doesn't have two memory controllers, but nForce2 does. I can see the Sandra benchmarks change, dual channel does do something, two DIMMs or three. I have also personally benchmarked ~3% difference in FPS in Battlefield Vietnam between 512 MB in dual channel vs. 512 MB in single channel in my system. I understand that 3% is minimal, but it is there and it is repeatable.

 

[FuFighterStan]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
dual channel as no effect on socket A and 754 dude, meaning no effect on nForce 2. it doesnt matter if it says dual channel. the fact that its in dual channel position doesnt mean it has any benefitted dual channel performance. also, dual channel does not work with 3 dimms!

Little to no effect is not the same as not exitsting. Fast Writes enabled on my video card doesn't increase performance but i don't go around saying it doesn't exist.

 

[Ronin]

The proper answer here is that the 754's don't support dual channel, the 939's and various XP boards do. Dual channel does not show more than a 5-10% improvement, so it's a crap shoot if you want to do it. And by performance I'm talking synthetic, as it's not something you'd see in operations.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

True DC-DDR doesn't net much performance gain in most apps but there are a few that are heavily bandwidth dependent that show better gains. Also true that you won't notice it in most usage, but there are always exceptions 🙂 On a lenghty Encode project, time can be noticably shortened if DC provides just 1fps more than SC.

Fastwrites does increase performance in some isolated situations too, another exception to the rule of thumb 🙂 I ran the 1080p of Step into liquid trailer with fastwrites on and off on a A64 2.4ghz 6800gt system. The difference in playback or lack there of was dramatic.

Ronin seems to have shown that 3 sticks can run very well on 939 so that answers the OPs question.