Add another 512?

[Drew]

I am new to the PC building thing. I have an Asus A78n-x Socket A motherboard (i know its old my mistake). This board has 3 dimm's and right now i am using 2 x 512mb modules. I was wondering what kind of effect adding another 512mb module would have or would it would even be worth it.

Thanks

P.S. awaiting all the jokes about my out-of-date board.

 

[Jakal]

No jokes from me I just built mine! I know some of the socket A boards offered dual channel ram and of course only 2 channels would work with it. I'd suggest looking up the specs and finding out.
I'm pretty sure you'll benefit from another 512 stick but I don't know if that would cost you a dual channel setup.

 

[Drew]

No Dual Channel

Yeah this board doesn't support dual channel, I checked. So i wouldn't have to worry about affecting it that way.

 

[Jakal]

Then I'd say go for it... unless you want to start saving up for a new rig . Prices steadily fall and finding good parts is easy nowadays.

 

[Drew]

Thanks

Thanks for the info Jakal. I think i might go with both. get another 512 to tide me over till the funds roll in for a newer system.

 

[Jakal]

If it's at all possible match your ram. I'm not saying your pc won't work with 3 different types of ram in it. I'm just saying you might have better luck if they are. If your ram sticks all have different timings and voltages you may run into conflicts or poor performance. Just a heads up.

 

[Drew]

Thanks

Thanks for the additional info man. That will make the search alot easier.

 

[Jakal]

No problem man glad to help.

 

[Sledgehammer70]

I am new to the PC building thing. I have an Asus A78n-x Socket A motherboard (i know its old my mistake). This board has 3 dimm's and right now i am using 2 x 512mb modules. I was wondering what kind of effect adding another 512mb module would have or would it would even be worth it.

Thanks

P.S. awaiting all the jokes about my out-of-date board.

Windows XP "If that is what Operating system your running likes to have 1056MB of memory. that is windows lucky number... once you hit that mark you will see an increase in performance. If youre a gamer than i would recommend the extra ram, but for every day activities, don't worry about it.

 

[zachig]

As your mobo doesn't support dual-channel, I don't see why not add another 512MB stick. You won't has any problems nor decrease in performance, but you can gain better performance, especially in games (if you are a gamer).

 

[werty316]

Adding another 512MB for a total of 1536MB should give you a good jump in performance as this your system won't be using virtual memory very much or at all depending on what you are using your computer for.

 

[BLuKnight]

RAM is good. But it can be overkill. Personally, I'd love to have 4 Gig of RAM in my A64 some day so I can ditch the swap file. However, even with games, you'll only see a sligh increase of performance. The main reason you'd want to beef up the ram is if you're running some intense video/photo programs. In my case, I have a ton of ram in my rig because I write code and run a few virtual machines. (Virtual Machines are really nice for testing new network modifications and running database/web servers. You can shut them down when you're done coding and testing.) The price of RAM is very cheap. I think Best Buy has PNY 512 sticks for $40. Try to determine if this is a NEED or a WANT. $40 in a jar is $40 closer to your next rig.

 

[madmat]

Your board does support dual channel, I just looked it up here and it's right there so you'll see a good gain from not only increasing the amount of ram but from boosting the bandwidth as well.

Make sure to consult the manual for how to configure DC and if you need help I'll download the manual and walk you through it here.

 

[fussnfeathers]

Your motherboard does support dual-channel, but only when two slots are used, like slots 1 and 3, with nothing in slot 2. Adding a third stick of RAM will disable dual-channel mode on that board. The manual says that it will still support dual-channel using all three slots (splitting the middle stick into two, basically, one side running with channel 1, the other running with channel 3), but past experience with that board shows that it doesn't always work.

Adding another 512 to your mobo will be a bit of a trade-off. If you do alot of photo editing or other memory-intensive stuff, losing the dual channel in favor of more capacity will help. For gaming and daily usage, though, you'll not see any performance gain to speak of. In general, 1gb of RAM in dual channel will out-game 1.5gb of RAM in single-channel mode, as the throughput is faster.

If you have the cash, and haven't already bought new RAM, I would suggest getting a 2gb kit (two 1gb sticks) and running that in dual-channel.

 

[zachig]

You're abosolutely right, fussnfeathers. But, I still thing that 1.5GB running Non-Dual will perform better than running 2x512MB in Dual-Channel.

 

[werty316]

Dual channel provides morebandwidth than single channel so no matter how much ram you have in single channel, dual channel is better. If you don't care about bandwidth go with more memory. You won't exactly tell the difference without running some memory benchmarks.

 

[Jakal]

I should have looked at the specs myself. Sorry about that. Unless you're doing resourse hogging progams like data movement/creation, you won't notice any increase in speed. The main reason for upgrading the ram is to increase system performance. Knowing what I do now, I'd say upgrading would be a bad thing. If you're gaming more then dual channel is the way to go.

 

[fussnfeathers]

A simple way of looking at the difference between single and dual channel, and why one is better than the other is sortof like this.

Single channel (1gb, in two 512mb sticks): CPU--------stick one--------stick two--------software

---------------------------------------------------------------stick one---
Dual channel (1gb, in two 512mb sticks) CPU -------------software
---------------------------------------------------------------stick two---

In the first example, the RAM is being treated as one large stick, which is excellent for large file chunks, like a video or large music file. The first stick will write until it's full, then spill over to the second stick, and read to the second stick until it's full, then spill over. Not ideal for gaming, as the second stick is basically just acting as an extended roadway, simply passing along the data the first stick already read.

In the second example, each stick is treated as an individual, great for games which use small chunks of data for sound and video, and will never actually spill over into the second stick. Dual channel allows (basically) four data streams. Not ideal for video or sound editing, as each stick fills, then the program has to wait for that buffer to empty for one task, while filling the other buffer with another task, that has to then wait for the first task to finish.

Latency also plays a part. Larger memory sizes require more time to move through the chips, which is not ideal for gaming, web surfing, or daily usage. The "sweet spot" for most games is 1gb, with a few exceptions (BF2 is touchy about just 1gb, but only on some systems), in dual channel mode. This allows the fastest data transfer, which translates to a few FPS. Adding more RAM, in most cases, will actually slow your system down for quick moving programs. While 2gb of RAM will improve BF2, it will actually drop your FPS in HL2, due to the increased latency.

TBH, you're bottlenecked with your proc/board, more than with the RAM.

 

[spiffyp]

Great explanation, fussnfeathers!

I'm also still running Socket A (I know, I know... but I'm broke!).
I've experimented a bit & DEFINATLY got better results with 1gb in dual-channel than w/ 1.5gb in non-dual-channel.

I won't bother w/ the 2gb kit, though. For the price a good, matched 2gb kit would cost you could get most of the way to a new rig (MB & CPU).
Besides, there's almost nothing out there that makes efficient use of 2gb of RAM unless the files you're working with are that big (sound/video/graphics editing).

 

[werty316]

It is much better using dual channel especially for gaming. Its like a highway single channel is like a single lane road and dual channel is like a double highway. Twice as much traffic comes and goes.