Curse

Valkyrian · Aug 02, 2006, 01:24 PM // 13:24

I'm upgrading my computer from 512mb of RAM to 1gb of RAM this coming week. I am taking out the old stick (512mb), and will be installing either dual 512mb's or a single 1gb stick. What I'm wondering is whether there is a true difference between the two and which setup has the better performance for GW using either 512x2 or a 1gig stick.

-RAM will be Corsair SDRAM DDR2 (240-pin) with either 512mbx2 or 1gb stick. (multiple model #'s to choose from based on price.)
-Will also be upgrading my graphics card with an NVidia 7600GT card.

Let me know what you think and hopefully this will help me in my decision.

majoho · Aug 02, 2006, 05:28 PM // 17:28

Depends on your motherboard, most modern boards use dual channel and in that case two smaller sticks will be faster than one big.

sleepy samurai · Aug 02, 2006, 08:30 PM // 20:30

Well dual channel is faster and 512 ram has better timings. But the difference is about 10%. For overclocking two is good.

The key thing in ram is not to mix so if you think you ever want to go 2GB do it now. Mixing ram can cause all kind of weird things to happen from reboots to just not working.

I would get 2x512s with lower timing or get 2x1GB.

gabrial heart · Aug 02, 2006, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Why not just buy a gig stick and toss it in? Then you have 1.5? If your concidering investing in a single gig stick anyway. This will at least give you the option to toss in another later, other wise if you want 2 gigs you'll have to buy 2 chips later (unless you have 4 slots).

There's alot of issues, there are some overclocking issues (mostly over heat displacement between 1 or 2 chips), but if you have 2 same stat chips with different amounts of total mem, you're not going to take a noticible hit in performance then you would if you have went with 2 512mb chips. An extra 512 certainly wont hurt.

If your machine isn't dual channel then there is no speed benifit.

heres a link that might help with you're decision...
http://www.cpuplanet.com/features/ar...0231_1587771_3