What is and How to do a duel channel ddr thingy?

[catattack]

Hey guys... Well i'm sure everyone knows i'm getting the NF7-S mobo, but I heard about duel channel ddr... What is that? And how can I do that?

[Agent]

you just get 2 sticks of RAM and put them in slots 2 and 3 for it to activate
It'll use 2 memory controlers as opposed to one

[catattack]

do they have to be the exact same types of memory? I only have one stick of a crappy brand 512mb.

[Agent]

Nope they dont
Although for money making purposes, some companys are doing "dual ddr certified ram", when its just the same stuff in most cases (somtimes it has different timings) because all the work is done on the motherboard and no on the RAM in regards to the data processing.

[xlr8]

Dual channel ram is like running them parallel instead of in series. It generally improves bandwidth but you will want matching ram.

[Agent]

Originally posted by xlr8
but you will want matching ram.

No you wont, its fine without.

[spikegifted]

Matching or otherwise is not that important... However, you want to get DIMMs that have tight timing properties.

[acidrainy]

would matching sizes make a diff to non matching ?

[Agent]

Originally posted by acidrainy
would matching sizes make a diff to non matching ?

The problem with buying memory in Dual DDR kit's is that the spd timings are set lower. The JEDEC spec says dual DDR certified RAM has timings of 2 8 4 4 or 2.5 8 4 4, while single channel can be 2 6 3 3 or 2.5 6 3 3.
Of course, this isnt a huge matter, as you would probably be overclocking them anyway, but its worth noting that the RAM is acctually certified to run at slower timings than it was if it was single channel - and manufactures will only usual hounor these speeds (unless otherwise stated obviously).
All the latest Nforce 2 BIOS's will default the timings to either 2 8 4 4 or 2.5 8 4 4 depending on what the CAS is set at on the RAMs SPD, to go faster, overclock them

[royce]

I have four slots in mind and four 256 dual channel memory, that should be ok right?

[Trickle]

Originally posted by acidrainy
would matching sizes make a diff to non matching ?

Need to be the same size.

I've not come across 4 slot AMD board dual DDR solutions - although thats not to say they arnt out there (I'm not too up on KT600 boards etc). I'm not up on intel boards either... but I would say that if the specs offer Dual DDR and if it has four slots, then its probably going to offer Dual DDR with all four slots populated.

[Nacrisa]

I was thinking of trying dual channel memory, but I've already got a 512MB (cas3, PC3200) stick from Crucial.
If I buy a pair of modules from Twinmos (for e.g.) and keep my Crucial memory, will the Crucial memory affect the performance of the dual-channel memory?

[spikegifted]

In all memory applications, latency setting will go by the slowest of whatever sticks are installed.

[Agent]

Originally posted by Trickle
Need to be the same size.

RAM does not need to be the same size for Dual DDR to work.

[bloo_fish]

Originally posted by Agent
RAM does not need to be the same size for Dual DDR to work.

Alright, Have you seen any articles on this (this being dual ddr on a nf7-s board)? Would be interesting to read cuase i am also gonna be running dual ddr soon and theres a few things a would like to make sure on

and could you tell me how sure you are on if i could run
256 samsung 2700 and
512 crucial 2700 in dual ddr?

and there would be no problems?

[Edit] Also sorry catattack for hijacking the thread a bit.....

Cheers

[Agent]

You would run them fine. You wont beable to overclock them to as fast timings, FSB doesnt seem to be effected a great deal, but this will be made up by the fact that your using dual DDR. Remember its the memory controlers that to the work when it comes to data processing, not the memory.