ok, if you buy 2 seperate sticks of pc3200 ddr, you are not guarenteeing that they are what is called "matched".
the deal is that because every silicon chip is a wee bit different based on what big chunk of silicon it comes off of, with SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) the timming of memory is so crucial that subtle differences in chiops that come from 2 different silicon wafer batches will make them not actually be identically the same even though they are both rated at the same speeds.
with dual channelling, the ability for the timmings of 2 seperate memory modules filling each channel of a dual channel set up to be spot on every time is critical. because of this, memory manufacturers began selling "paired" sets of modules. these paired sets are guarenteed to work in a dual channel configuration. other wise, it's hit-or-miss whether buying 2 of the exact same model of memory module from the same manufacturer will work in dual channel config.
now, the thing is if your motherboard has dual channel, and has 4 DIMM slots with 2 seperate dual channel options, there is nothing preventing you from putting 2 seperate manufacturer's pairs of dual channel modules in each one. in other words, for example, a pair of kingston hyperx paired modules in the first dual channel slots, and then a pair of corsair twinx paired moduels in the other dual channel slots.
with duel channeling you have to think of each channel pair as actually a single memory moduel, like how a RQID array ios seen by your operating system as a single hard disk. just like with RAID where they reccomend identical hard drives, with dual channel memory configurations you need the identical, or "paired" moduels, just for the fact that the timmings are so tight.
when it all comes down to it, it's still cheaper than ddr2 anyway
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