should I go for dual channel

[psjohny]

I have 2 pieces of Ram both are running at 320.
My mobo supports dual channel ddr, should I upgrade my memory to 256x2 DDR400?
By this way I must trade in both of my ram (640MB) to get 512MB.
Is it worth trading in? I'll lost 128Mb while I'll get higher performance.
BTW, I've looked into many reviews saying dual channel performance gain would be just few % for gaming on external vga card.
dual cannel test on nforce2

CPU: P4 2.4c
M/B: Asus P4P800 (Bios 1010)
VGA: Radeon 9600 np
Ram: 1x128, 1x512 DDR 333 (@320)
OS: Windows XP SP1

[dr_roberts49]

It's the wave of the future. Go for it. You'll see more apps taking advantage of the technology.

Robert

[Emc2]

Currently, NO. You could spend the money, gain a little bit of performance, but nope. It's not noticable. And it's not up to the software to take advantage of it, it's the whole concept of Dual Channel that makes it an insignificant change. It all has to do with the memory bandwidth, and if I find the article I read, I will link it.

It WILL provide a significant change if you're using, say, Poser, 3dsMax, or Maya while trying to make special effects for the next Star Wars movie...lots of memory-intensive stuff going on there...

[WingWizard]

I personally noticed a significant increase in performance

You should get ddr400 (or higher if you overclock) anyway; your 333 is hamstringing your system with that P4 2.4c

[DanGrease]

Originally posted by dr_roberts49
It's the wave of the future. Go for it. You'll see more apps taking advantage of the technology.

Robert

I agree totally. Go for it you will see significant increase of performance when you multi task. Memory is not that expensive but its worth the money spent on it. I would go for it if I were you.

dan

[cysus]

more important to proformace than dual channel memory is hyperthreading. it provides more boost than dual channel.

[psjohny]

For now, I have overclocked my memories to 400Mhz
and it works without any problems, but for performance I have not seen any gain in 3dmark03, only from memory benchmark think it's comparable to dual pc800 rdram.
Maybe i'll go for real DDR400Mhz when I need dual channel.

[cysus]

you have the most important feture- hyperthreading, dual channel isn't worth it unless it is only $50 or so more

[still_confused]

I can see how someone might experience an increase in performance switching to dual channel on a P4 system.

But have any of you, who are using an nForce2 motherboard, Athlon XP CPU and a graphics card, experienced a noticeable or significant difference in performance? I find it hard to believe that the memory bandwidth is utilized unless integrated graphics are in use.