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  1. I am planing ro "refresh" my PC with new mobo and after reading this comment "Don't forget to buy in pairs so that your CPU/Northbridge can take advantage of dual channel capabilities." in www.anandtech.com, I was wondering....

    Most of the motherboards that I am looking at have 3 slots for memory. What is going to happen later on when I decide to add some more memory ? Will I loose "of dual channel capabilities" ?

    Right now my plan is to buy 2x256MB DDR. If prices of memory will go down or I will be in need, I will add some more.
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  2. contrarian rallynavvie's Avatar
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    I think the dual-channel works only with two identical sticks. Adding a third will disable the dual-channel ability. I heard somewhere that the third slot can also be run as memory for the PCI bus but I don't know if that's true or not. All the boards I'm looking at currently have 4 DIMM slots that run dual channel as long as there are pairs of RAM (2 identical or 4 identical), but they're SMP boards.
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  3. If you go Here and select

    CPU Socket Type : Socket A
    System Chipset : NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400

    You will see a lot of "3x DIMM support Dual Channel DDR400/333/266 Max 3GB"
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  4. Member
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    I have an Abit NF7-S NForce2 dual channel board and a Tyan 2668 ANR Dual Xeon dual channel board with the 7505 chipset. On the NF7-S, if you fill all 3 dimms with the same memory you will still have dual channel. If you get only 2 sticks, check the manual because they have to be in certain slots for dual channel to be activated.

    On the Tyan, I can't use 3 sticks because it needs to be in pairs to run dual channel just like rallynavvie said so I just put in 4x256 DDR 3200 and it is dual channel now.

    Hope that helps.

    Tom
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  5. Good one... Thanks. I am checking manual right now...
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  6. What am I blind ??? I can't find that info....
    http://www.abit-usa.com/downloads/manual/an7.zip
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  7. Member
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    Well, my board is the NF7-S and the manual you put up is for the AN-7 so I'm not sure what you mean ? Are you getting the NF7 or the AN7? The AN7 could be differrent than my board.I'll try to find the info for the AN7.
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  8. Originally Posted by jtommyj
    Well, my board is the NF7-S and the manual you put up is for the AN-7 so I'm not sure what you mean ? Are you getting the NF7 or the AN7? The AN7 could be differrent than my board.I'll try to find the info for the AN7.
    Sorry... I thought it is clear I am planing to buy AN7
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  9. Member
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    Here is the AN7 info:



    http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/qa/2003/2003112105.htm


    You will see the string “Dual Channel enabled” on the POST screen while RAM modules installed on DIMM 2&3, DIMM 1&3 or all three DIMM slots. If you installed only one memory module on either one slot or two memory modules on DIMM 1&2, you will see the string “Single Channel enabled” on the POST screen. Please refer to the following ABIT website for the memory modules we have tested on AN7.
    It is the same for the NF-7 since it is also the NForce2 chipset.
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  10. Thanks man... (or girl? based on avatar )
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  11. Member
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    It's man .... Girl=Wife
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  12. Just a question sort of related to this:

    If you do lose dual channel capability by adding an extra stick, won't you still benefit by having the extra memory?

    for instance
    which is better do you think:

    dual channel 2 x 512MB
    single channel 2 x 512MB + 1 x 256MB?
    or single channel 2 x 512MB + 2 x 256MB?

    I myself am upgrading shortly, will probably just have 2 x 512MB dual channel, but it would be interesting to know if i could add the current memory i have now and still get a performance boost.
    Some people are only alive because it may be illegal to kill them
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  13. One of my computers is working in exacly the situation from this topic . Initialy I bought a pair of memories and I`ve installed them in the specific slots. After I read this topic I was curios to see what happens if I put an older DDR (made by a different factory) in the remaining free slot. Making a lot of tests with benchmarks I saw that better results are obtained with only 2X256 pair DDR then adding a third DDR. The difference is very little but maybe for one that like to juice all the speed for encoding with XVID (like me) might mean something. But for sombody that uses the computer for games it may be more important to have more memory. I used only DDR of 400 Mhz (all 3 of them) and CL 2,5 , with 256 Mb in order to not influence the results of the test. Also ,on the boot-screen after introducing the third DDR it wass still appearing" DUAL DDR ENABLED" anounce.
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