Dual Channel Mobos - Are They Value For Money?

[DarthInsinuate]

Dual channel motherboards tend to be more expensive than their single channel alternatives, also buying two sticks of identical RAM bumps the cost up a little

furthermore the benchmarks here (http://www6.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20031107/nforce2-400-04.html#openglbenchmarks) say there's a marginal performance boost - so what are everyone's opinions of buying dual-channel? - Performance enhancing go-juice :) , or money-extortionate tripe :(

[3RA1N1AC]

eh... if they're able to improve dual channel memory controllers in the future, it might be worthwhile someday.

sorta like using SATA for single drives (the benchmarks usually only show significant improvement in stripe RAID setups), it's got potential... but the early versions of the technology aren't too impressive.

so if you've got a little bit of money to spare... then sure, why not? but i wouldn't call it a must-have feature, by any means.

[bigdawgfoxx]

Hmm..I always thought daul channel made a big difference, but know I see that it doesnt. I was gona spend 100 bux on a mobo just cuz it had dual channel and 120 bux on daul channel ram. I think now I will buy the cheaper board with single channel and one stick of 512MB which should save me alot of money. Thanks

[_John_Lennon_]

Originally posted by bigdawgfoxx@11 December 2003 - 12:12
Hmm..I always thought daul channel made a big difference, but know I see that it doesnt. I was gona spend 100 bux on a mobo just cuz it had dual channel and 120 bux on daul channel ram. I think now I will buy the cheaper board with single channel and one stick of 512MB which should save me alot of money. Thanks
Its hard to tell if you will notice a big increase in just playing BF 1942 or such, or sufring the net, but you can easily find some budget AMD boards, (65 ish I believe) that have dual channel. As for Dual channel itself, it does increase performance, but like i said, you might not even notice it, depending on how you use your computer.