Question : Problem: dual channel memory

well i just bought a new motherboard equipped with quad core intel and 4 gigs of memory. this is an upgrade from my 2 gigs and dual core system.  i am going to keep the old 2 gigs for the new board so i will have 6 gigs all together.  on the motherboard there are two different colored slots for the memory, yellow and black.  both of my memories are dual channel. i have 2 sticks of 2 gigs each and 2 sticks of 1 gig each. if i install the 1 gig sticks to the black slots, and the 2 gig sticks to the yellow slots, would that be the best solution. i read somewhere that they should be the same size for dual channel, and i figured that each different colored slot is a seprate channel. the thing that i dont get is that the yellow and black slots are seperate from each other....diagram is like this----

Black
Yellow

Black
Yellow

those are how the slots are aligned. any help thanks!!
jsthursday

Answer : Problem: dual channel memory

Your motherboard has what is called Dual-channel memory. The idea is that the work of the memory is spread between two different channels on your motherboard and each channel has two separate memory slots. In other words, you will have for example like you had said, two 1 gigabyte sticks in channel one and two 1 gigabyte sticks in channel two.

Heres the catch, in order for dual channel to do what you want it to do, the memory speeds need to be clocked at the same rate in each stick of each channel. In other words, you can't have two sticks at 800 Mhz in channel one and two sticks at 667 Mhz in channel two. Your computer will likely still boot up, but it will definitely clock down your memory to 667 Mhz and maybe (depending on your bios) disable dual channel.

Here's an illustration:

|---------|------------------| <- Slot 0 Channel 1 (Yellow)
|---------|------------------| <- Slot 1 Channel 2 (Blue)

|---------|------------------| <- Slot 2 Channel 1 (Yellow)
|---------|------------------| <- Slot 3 Channel 2 (Blue)

Your "old memory" will likely be at a different speed than your new memory in your new machine. So you will probably not want to install it.  Secondly, many people misconstrue that memory quantity doesn't do much in the way of helping a computers performance, memory speed is much more relevant.  In other words, its better to run 2 Gigabytes at 800MHz speed than 4 Gigabytes at 667MHz, this is something you should consider.

Another thing you will need to know is that 32-bit versions of Windows XP and Vista will only support up to 4 Gigabytes of memory (although it will display 3.5 Gigabytes in your system settings)  If you are planning on installing over 4 Gigabytes of memory you will need to upgrade to a 64-bit version of your operating system as well.  Even then, 4 Gigabytes at the faster speed is much better than 6 Gigabytes at the slower.

Hope this helps!

Craig