Determine RAM specifications?

[Bryan O'Neal]

I have never really felt any benefit from running interleaved.  Any one
here think it is worth buying a second module?

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of
Joseph Sinclair
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 8:59 PM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Determine RAM specifications?

Alan Dayley wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2007-02-14 at 17:28 -0700, Alan Dayley wrote:
>>>> What I hear you say is that if the two memory modules are of the
same
>>>> size and speed but are from two different manufacturers they will
not
>>>> support dual-channel.  Is that what you are saying?
>>>>
>>> ----
>>> can be problematic - might work, might not
>>>
>>> Craig
> 
> I assume the second module will still double the space even if the
> dual-channel does not work.  And the dual-channel failing to work will
> not "break" the memory operation.
> 
> So I may have to purchase from Toshiba to be sure that something will
> work right if I really want dual-channel support.
> 
> Alan
> 
> 
Unpaired DIMM's will still work, the dual-channel interleave just won't.
You may have to set your BIOS to not use dual-channel to make it work
properly.

The bigger issue is that, even from the same manufacturer, if the specs
on 2 banks
are slightly off (this often shows up in the non-speced timings), the MB
may run
fine in dual-channel mode, except for occasional errors that won't be
noticed
without ECC enabled, and may lead to random system instability.  That's
why
it's generally best to buy paired DIMM's if you want to run dual-channel
RAM.
If you aren't doing that, then just make sure dual-channel is turned
off, run
DIMM's with the same specs for flexibility, and don't worry about
manufacturer
so much.