1 Or 2 Sicks Of Ram?

Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram in pairs?
Is that true?

thx

bob

"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram in
pairs?
Is that true?

No....even dual channel capable boards don't need dual sticks to run. One
stick is all you need. On a dual channel board it can't go in the master
dual channel slot or it won't work. But it can go in either of the 2 other
slots.

You only needed to run 2 sticks back in the good ol days of SIMM's and
Pentium 1s.


"Augustus" wrote in message
news:%N5wc.16245$DV4.3815@clgrps13...

"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram in
pairs?
Is that true?

No....even dual channel capable boards don't need dual sticks to run. One
stick is all you need. On a dual channel board it can't go in the master
dual channel slot or it won't work. But it can go in either of the 2 other
slots.

Thanks, Guys

Sorry for the typo sticks, not sicks

The local computer place told my bud that a MB with Dual channel memory
would run better with 2 sticks instead of 1, but that 1 would still work.
True? Asus P4P800 MB.

thx

bob




Alex wrote:
You only needed to run 2 sticks back in the good ol days of SIMM's and
Pentium 1s.


"Augustus" wrote in message
news:%N5wc.16245$DV4.3815@clgrps13...

"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram
in pairs? Is that true?

No....even dual channel capable boards don't need dual sticks to
run. One stick is all you need. On a dual channel board it can't go
in the master dual channel slot or it won't work. But it can go in
either of the 2 other slots.

Dual channel will give you a better throughput, as you effectivly double the
bis width (or something like that ...). If you have the choice, get 2
sticks of memory, but make sure they're the same size / type, and inserted
into the correct slots on the board.


"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Thanks, Guys

Sorry for the typo sticks, not sicks

The local computer place told my bud that a MB with Dual channel memory
would run better with 2 sticks instead of 1, but that 1 would still work.
True? Asus P4P800 MB.

thx

bob




Alex wrote:
You only needed to run 2 sticks back in the good ol days of SIMM's and
Pentium 1s.


"Augustus" wrote in message
news:%N5wc.16245$DV4.3815@clgrps13...

"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram
in pairs? Is that true?

No....even dual channel capable boards don't need dual sticks to
run. One stick is all you need. On a dual channel board it can't go
in the master dual channel slot or it won't work. But it can go in
either of the 2 other slots.

In the REAL good ol' days, FOUR sticks were required at a time because each
was only 8 bits wide; 53 ns (the fastest I ever saw) to 120 ns access time,
30 pin SIMMs that went all the way up to 16 Mbytes per stick; giving a
maximum memory capacity of 128 Mbytes when all 8 memory slots were used.

--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

"Alex" wrote in message
...
You only needed to run 2 sticks back in the good ol days of SIMM's and
Pentium 1s.


"Augustus" wrote in message
news:%N5wc.16245$DV4.3815@clgrps13...

"Bob Snelgrove" wrote in message
...
Hi

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram in
pairs?
Is that true?

No....even dual channel capable boards don't need dual sticks to run.
One
stick is all you need. On a dual channel board it can't go in the master
dual channel slot or it won't work. But it can go in either of the 2
other
slots.

"Bob Snelgrove" writes:
The local computer place told my bud that a MB with Dual channel memory
would run better with 2 sticks instead of 1, but that 1 would still work.
True? Asus P4P800 MB.

It will work with 1 or with 2. It will NOT go twice as fast with 2,
assuming that you had 1 of size X or 2 of size X/2.

Some people see surprisingly small increases in speed with 2 versus 1.
If you have this system you might try measuring speeds both ways,
with a stopwatch. Then report what you timed and what you found.

In the REAL good ol' days, FOUR sticks were required at a time because
each
was only 8 bits wide; 53 ns (the fastest I ever saw) to 120 ns access
time,
30 pin SIMMs that went all the way up to 16 Mbytes per stick; giving a
maximum memory capacity of 128 Mbytes when all 8 memory slots were used.

I've got a machine that takes needs DIMMs in sets of four. Of course,
it's a quad-Xeon machine, has four-way interleaved memory, 16 DIMM sockets,
and no less than three PCI busses (busses, not slots!).

In reference to another message that said that all dual-channel
motherboards will work with only one DIMM, that's not entirely true. I have
a number of SuperMicro 6013P-I systems which *require* DIMMs in sets of two
in order to function, which I believe is a limitation of the E7501 chipset.
Of course, that's not the sort of system that you run into in someone's
home, or when you're talking about overclocking. : )

steve

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 13:56:10 -0700, "Bob Snelgrove"
wrote:

My friend says that new systems with DDR ram have to have the ram in pairs?
Is that true?

no, but IMHO is good to have 2 sticks; if one dies, you still have a
functional machine (with half of its previous mem)...
--
Regards, SPAJKY ®
& visit my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com
"Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!"
E-mail AntiSpam: remove ##