The memory controller is traffic light. In one direction you have four lane roads going through light. One way goes to CPU and the other goes around board to where it is wanted, like video card. There is other way to go, and that is to memory. In single channel, this is not pretty. It’s a one lane street which wants to send information both directions. With dual channel it is a little bit easier. It could now be a two lane road, to send and receive at similar time. To notice what type of differences this makes, let’s do some tests.

Not all chipsets are made identical. Every chipset will respond to dual channel in a different way, even with different BIOS on similar board. Some may show better boosts over others. I will check Intel 865 chipset. There are too many chipsets to test them all. This chipset is DDR RAM, but newer chipsets which support DDR2 will also run in dual channel.

To put your memory to dual channel is easy; you may even be running in dual channel already and not know it. Most motherboards are color coded like this one. You place both modules in similar colored slots. If your motherboard doesn’t have colored slots it will be odd or even slots. Dual Channel requires either two or four modules. What you have is three modules attempting to all use similar single memory channel.

To make sure that your memory is running in dual channel I suggest CPU-Z. CPU-Z is a program that takes information about CPU, motherboard and RAM. Under memory tab look where it says “Channel #.” It will either say single or double.

The other issue to think is type and quality of memory modules you obtain. It is suggested that you purchase two of similar modules now. Manufacturers over time can switch what chips are in the memory. Ensure that RAM is similar speed and memory latency. You don’t want to purchase a high speed or low latency memory only to have it washed out by other stick, which isn’t as fast or possesses a higher latency. When running in dual channel each stick must do precisely the same, so they must have same speed and same latency.