[cannondalejunky]

sorry if parts of this doesn't make sense...when it comes to hardware i'm not 100% when it comes to the technological vocab

a buddy of mine just fried his cpu and so he decided to build a 64bit system. right now i've only got 1 bar of 512 ddr ram...but he has 2 that he's gonna sell me...from his system that he has right now. so i'm wondering, is it gonna run the ddr over just 2 of the sticks since it is "dual" or will it be able to run it over all three

 

[binary visions]

Um...

I think you're saying that his RAM is dual channel. Dual channel memory effectively doubles the bandwidth of the memory, but will only be enabled if you have two sticks of the same memory.

Depending on how much memory your friend's new sticks will offer, and also depending on the speed of his memory, it may be faster to put his two sticks in and take yours out unless you're running very memory-intensive applications.

Make sure the memory is compatible before you pay him for it, though.

 

[cannondalejunky]

well when i built my system i wasn't really paying attention and i bought 1 stick of dual channel memory...and he has 2 sticks of dual channel...and i'm pretty sure it's even the same exact memory...just he has 2 and i have 1...and i'm wondering how it will work if i run 3 as opposed to 2

 

[binary visions]

No, it will not. The RAM will work fine but you will be running in single channel mode, which is a large enough performance hit that it may, as I said, be faster to run two sticks of dual channel memory even though you don't have as much actual RAM that way. You would have to experiment to find out.