Mark, I think you have in mind how the Intel boards typically implement
their dual channel setups, which is with two pairs of slots, for a total of
four DIMM slots.

The dual channel nforce2 Athlon motherboards typically only have three
slots.  One bank consists of one slot and the other bank consists of two
slots. I think that this has to do with differences in how Intel and AMD
(Nvidia) go about achieving a 128-bit wide memory bus.

In practice, if you fill both slots in the bank with two slots, you have
single channel 64-bit memory.  If you fill the bank that only has one slot
and either of the two slots in the other bank, you get dual channel 128-bit
memory.

As far as I know, filling all three slots still gives you 128-bit memory,
but I don't know what the memory controller makes of having more memory in
one bank than the other, which is what you would get, if you used three
equal size DIMMS.

Also, I'm not sure that the performance gain going to dual channel with an
Athlon XP processor is as much as 10%.  This sounds more like what would be
the case with a Pentium 4 processor, as well.

John Sproule

----- Abbreviated Original Message -----
From: "Mark Rode" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 1:10 PM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] 1gb PC3200 Dual Channel vs. 1.5 GB PC3200


>  Sticking a third DIMM in, or one DIMM, in a single side of a channel,
> will result in both channels operating in NON dual channel mode. If you
> have a open channel,  or 2 DIMM slots, you might as well use them to put
> in
> two DIMMS, as opposed to a single large DIMM. Dual channel will give you
> around a 10 percent boost in memory performance.

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