A quick question I hope. I currently have 2 gig of DDR2 PC6400 running in dual channel mode. One stick died and I replaced that quickly at the local store (A$ 27). I am now waiting for the warranty replacement stick to arrive and wonder if I should install it. I believe this would make everything run in single channel mode (?) but I would have 3 gig of RAM. I realise XP can't take advantage of 4 gig. I've also read that there is not much gain in performance using dual channel (?). What's better 2 gig in dual channel or 3 gig in single channel? My game of choice (only) is Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance which was certainly markedly affected by having only one gig of RAM. Took almost a minute to return to desktop on exiting as compared to no delay with 2 gig. Thanks in advance for any answers. "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." R. Frost

I'd do 2GB in dual channel mode.

There is only an extremely tiny advantage to dual channel. Would you be able to perceive the difference between 2 1gb single channel sticks vs a dual channel pair of them? Probably not. Would you see a difference between a dual channel pair of 1gb and three 1gb sticks running in single channel mode? Does the increase of the amount of ram matter a whole lot more than whether it is in dual channel mode? Definately, IF you actually have things that need that much ram. If you are using something high end or are running multiple programs at the same time that could use much ram, yes, but most programs or program combinations don't need anywhere near that much. Ultimate Memory Guide How Much Memory Do You Need? etc. http://www.kingston.com/tools/umg/u...

Thanks very much for the answers guys! I might try putting in the 3rd stick of RAM when it arrives and see if I can notice any difference. When I only had 1 gig in (after one blew up) the only area I noticed anything was in Supreme Commander. ALL the day to day tasks (surfing, emails, word processing, etc)performed the same or at least with no noticeable difference to me. In Supreme Commander (with only one gig) you could notice the reads to the disk when 'things' happened on screen and also when you exited but the game itself seemed to play the same. As a point of interest I had posted another query on Dec. 6th (http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/50566.html) and this problem has disappeared. I assume now this was the RAM stick failing. Interesting Kingston web page. It looks like I have overkill levels of RAM except for Supreme Commander which appears to utilise it. Thanks again!! "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." R. Frost

"As a point of interest I had posted another query on Dec. 6th (http://www.computing.net/hardware/wwwboard/forum/50566.html) and this problem has disappeared. I assume now this was the RAM stick failing." I looked at that reference. AlwaysWillingToLearn is a newcomer to this site. He means well but sometimes I wonder what the heck is he talking about. I was looking around for a mboard for a friend and that's one of the ones I investigated. It was okay but I needed one with two IDE connectors. "....why does CPU-Z say my bus is at 201 but memory is at 359?" AM2 cpus have a quirk - because of the way DDR2 ram works, if the AM2 cpu is certain ratings, the ram doesn't actually run at 400mhz - it runs at something less. The overall cpu speed is as rated. There are mboards that can get around that - if both the mboard and the ram have a special feature the ram can be made to run at 400mhz with a slight reduction in the cpu multiplier automatically, but most AM2 mboard chipsets and most ram doesn't have that feature. I got an Asus M2N-E SLI because it was one of the only AM2 ones that had two IDE headers, amongst other things - it doesn't support that feature but my Crucial ram does. It's extremely rare for ram to "blow up". It's a lot more likely it burned up because you didn't have it all the way down in it's slot, or something else. A long beep while booting usually indicates a video problem, not a ram problem - it may have had nothing to do with the ram, and that can certainly cause booting problems. The video card may have had an iffy connection - reseating it or cleaning it's contacts would probably have made the problem go away. By the way, I have found the Asus M2N-E SLI doesn't get along with ATI chipset cards. Recent NVidia mboard chipsets, or rather, probably their drivers, will not allow the ATI Catalyst software to work properly. ATI says it's something oddball in the NVidia drivers that causes the problem but ATI hasn't come up with a solution yet (NVidia probably never will). I tried alternate Omega Radeon drivers that have a Control Panel instead of Catalyst, but I still had several problems...... - I couldn't load the special NVidia IDE driver which is also required for SATA drives to run in SATA mode which means SATA drives are limited to IDE compatible mode - 133mbps max burst speeds. - the computer sometimes stalls while booting, often when the ASUS logo screen is being displayed - the HD Led stays on forever. - less often but still frequently enough it stalls while shutting down - black screen - the HD Led stays on forever. - it sometimes black screens for no apparent reason and reboots, and when it does it sets the hard drive list boot order to defaults. My friend has a SATA drive but is booting Windows from an IDE one (of two)- defaults try to boot the SATA drive which has no operating system - the boot fails - you have to reset the hard drive boot order settings each time. The ram tests fine. It only does these things after the video drivers have been loaded in Windows. I am giving up and installing the components on an Epox AM2 mboard AD580XR - with an ATI/AMD chipset - it should get along with the ATI chipset video card and Catalyst fine - it was cheaper to buy another mboard than it was to buy a Nvidia chipset one, which it probably gets along with fine with, and have to also get a TV tuner card which she requires. I got her a really good deal on an AIW X600 Pro card and it's worth a lot more than the mboards plus the ram.

"When I only had 1 gig in (after one blew up) the only area I noticed anything was in Supreme Commander. ALL the day to day tasks (surfing, emails, word processing, etc)performed the same or at least with no noticeable difference to me. In Supreme Commander (with only one gig) you could notice the reads to the disk when 'things' happened on screen and also when you exited but the game itself seemed to play the same." The above was why I suggested you go with 2GB in dual channel configuration. I figured your machine -- with only 1GB -- was likely not taking a performance hit due to RAM deficiency & as you later corroborated: except for when playing Supreme Commander. Obviously, the extra 1GB added is more than sufficient enough to adequately meet Supreme Commander's need & you will be better off taking advantage of the ability to run the 2 x 1GB sticks in dual channel mode, rather than knocking your machine down to single channel mode for 3GB of RAM that is NEVER going to be harnessed by any of the programs & applications installed on your machine. So, why pick 3GB (SC) over 2GB (DC)?