My computer uses an Asus P5K-E mainboard http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/... which supports up to 8GB of RAM (2GB in 4 slots). I currently have 4GB (1GB in four slots) of PC-6400 DDR2 "Dual Channel" RAM. I want to upgrade the RAM to the 8GB maximum, but finding 2Gb sticks of PC-6400 Dual Channel RAM is finding to be very difficult. I cannot afford to upgrade anything other the RAM, which I keep running out of because of the applications I run.
My question is: Does my RAM have to be Dual Channel, or can I use non-Dual Channel RAM?
I know many of you would say that it isn't worth upgrading anything that has to do with an Intel socket 775 motherboard, but my Q6600 CPU & Nvidia 8800GT video card has never let me down and I would like to breathe some new life into it.
So, Dual Channel RAM an absolute necessity?
TIA,
PDW
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
While running in dual-channel (with all identical DIMMs in all slots) is best, the impact is negligible compared to the impact of GPU or CPU upgrades. For memory hungry applications, having enough RAM so Windows can avoid resorting to virtual memory usage is what really matters.
I think most DDR2 PC-6400 memory supports dual-channel mode.