What is Dual Channel Ram?

Look at this article about tweaking memory from TomsHardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030701/memory_tuning-01.html

When using a P4 800Mhz and DDR 400


Normal Setup:

Processor -------------Front Side Bus---------------------- Memory Controller ------------------DDR
                           Max Bandwidth 6.4G/s                                           Max Bandwidth 3.2 G/s

So you can see that theoretically you can only use half the FSB bandwidth when transfering to and from the memory


Dual Channel DDR

                                                                      -------- Memory Controller ------------------DDR
                                                                     |
Processor -------------Front Side Bus---------------------- Memory Controller ------------------DDR
                           Max Bandwidth 6.4G/s                             Max Bandwidth 3.2 G/s x2
                                                                                       Resulting bandwidth 6.4 G/s



So by using a Dual Channel system with at least 1 stick of DDR 400 in each Channel (usually colour coded or slightly different positions, if not check the manual for which is which) you can obtain a much higher bandwidth to and from the RAM and the Processor

Think of RAM as a big parking lot at Disneyland.  Think of the cars as data that goes on and off your RAM.  Each channel is an entrance/exit to the parking lot.  All RAM in the past only used one channel, or one entrance/exit.  Obviously, you will get a lot of traffic jams with only one exit.  Dual channel means two entrances/exits…twice as much traffic can get in/out.  which allowed... you guessed it… one car.

BTW, that Intel D875PBZLK board is the most stable, reliable, solid board on the market today!!!

The serial ATA RAID is a definite plus, dual-channel DDR, and unlike ALL OTHER i875 boards, this is the only one with true gigabit LAN.  Other board like the Asus P4C800-E use a seperate controller for the gigabit LAN which routes the data through the PCI bus.  It slows your PCI devices and bottlenecks your network connection to sub-gigabit transfer speeds.

If you want to never have troubles with your motherboard, buy an Intel.

I like Intel boards, can you tell?

I'm guessing you know how RAM works, Dual Channel, is far better than Single channel mode mainly because it effectively doubles the memory bandwidth you have.

i.e.

Assuming you know :-

266MHz = PC2100 or 2.1GB/s Peak theoretical Bandwidth
333MHz = PC2700 or 2.7GB/s Peak theoretical Bandwidth
400MHz = PC3200 or 3.2GB/s Peak theoretical Bandwidth

Armed with that knowledge, because Dual channel effectively has 2 channels, it DOUBLES the read/write etc..

so, say you have 1x512MB PC3200 Dimm you can achieve 3.2GB/s, but if you have 2x512MB PC3200 in dual channel mode (requires a capable mobo) you can effectively get 6.4GB/s.

so basicly if i put 2 sticks of 512MB DDR400 into a dual channel motherboard, ill get 1024 megs wif double the bandwith? sounds good to me.

Thanks!