What is Dual Channel DDR Memory?

[avijay]

What exactly is DC DDR Memory. How is it different from nomal DDR Memory. What kinda DDR memory do I buy if I have a mobo that supports DC DDR memory? Is it that I install a pair of DDR Sticks instead of just one? and what is the difference between SC DDR and DC DDR?

 

[MDE]

To use Dual Channel, just install two sticks of the same brand\type\model memory (for compatability). It doubles the theoretical memory bandwidth, which is much more useful on P4s than Athlons. <Doesn't mean that Athlons suck at all. BTW, Welcome to the forums.

 

[AndyHui]

When the term dual channel memory is used, it indicates that the motherboard chipset controls two channels of RAM instead of just one. This way, the bandwidth from the chipset to the memory is doubled.

As for the RAM itself, there is no difference. You simply purchase DIMMs in pairs, ie 2 or 4 DIMMs.

As an analogy, a single channel DDR means that there is one highway, while with dual channel DDR, there are 2 highways next to each other. You effectively double the traffic with dual channel.

 

[StraightPipe]

Welcome to Anandtech!

as they said, more of a performance increase for P4's. also if you have a vid card then it wont do so much.

if you mix your ram you'll only get speed of the slowest card (if it wll even go DC with mixed)

if your cabout to by ram i usually recomend getting a single 512 card, fast as you can afford, and then in another years or so, if you need more get another identical card for DC.

but it really depends on what you have now, post your system specs (ie: CPU make and speed, RAM, vid card)
also what you plan to do with it makes a big difference. if you just want to type, and surf net then 512 is plenty. if you want to game 512 i usually enough, but with new games like battlefield and unreal 2003 your get much quicker load times w/ 1 gig or 768 (256+512).