What channel Is The-N?

What's Better? 1 GB Dual Channel RAM or 1.5 GB Single Channel RAM?

• I have 2 sticks of PC3200, 400 MHz Dual-Channel RAM that total 1 GB (512 MB x 2), and 1 512 MB stick of PC3200, 400 MHz single-channel RAM. Will it perform faster with 1.5 GB single Channel or 1 GB dual channel (taking out the single 512 stick)?

• Answer:

  It depends. Dual Channel is usually faster in terms of access time but... if you use RAM hungry applications and frequently use that extra .5 Gigabyte of RAM then you're better off sacrificing faster access time to more RAM. Most of the time, you'll be better off with slower and more RAM than faster but less RAM, unless you're a gamer. The reason is obvious. If you need 1.5 GB of RAM and you only have 1.0 GB then your computer is going to use your Hard Drive as virtual memory. Hard drives access information in milliseconds, but RAM access is measured in nanoseconds, about one thousand times faster. So if you need that extra .5 GB and you typically use a lot of applications at once then you are definitely better off getting .5 GB more. But if you typically don't use more than 1.0 GB of memory then you're obviously better off running dual channel. By the way the difference between running single channel and dual channel is neglible when you're running Microsoft Office or most applications that typical home users use. It make a huge difference only when you are using a lot of memory intensitve applications and that includes games where latency (access time) is important for you for a responsive system.