Does quad channel means 4 sticks or Ram together?

[Gu-Gz]

Can you help me out please? Will I need to use 4 RAM sticks if I wanted to run Quad Channel mode? I have installed 4GB RAM on my computer, couple of 2GB and couple of 1GB. Also let me know whether it is possible to use couple of RAM sticks into Dual Channel mode? I would really thankful if you can give me some useful information on above mentioned topic.

[jamiejohn]

You will be able to use dual channel mode with 4 RAM sticks if following things are true.

• You must have two identical RAM sticks.
• All RAMs sticks must have compatible fsb speeds.

Now coming to another point, place the RAM sticks at particular slot. You can use various combination of slots. As per motherboard specification, you need to use combination of slot. For eg if you wanted to use dual channel with two RAM sticks simply use slot number 1 or 2. If it is running into Dual channel then it would show at the time of bootup. In my situation I managed to get 6.4GB/S while using Dual channel mode.

I had also noticed the system performance gets degardded when you are switching from 2 RAM sticks to 4 RAM sticks. Since it latency speed is getting slows down after doing the same. this particular thing is getting happened with many old Athlon CPUs.

All kind of RAM has CAS rating. The performance of matching stick would be degraded if other stick has lower value of it. in my opinion lower CAS rating should be better option for you. I noticed that people used to purchase lower CAS rating ram since it gives a kind of stability to overclocked computer. You might get issue on overclocked system, but you can configure the RAM as so that instability issue does not occur into future.

[Arun K]

To run Dual channel, you should have motherboard and RAM that are having support for it. all the people used to say that RAM should be paired properly , well I do agree whatever they are saying. It won’t work at all if you not aligned the RAM as per requirement. If performance is getting improved after removing any RAM sticks, other RAM not having support for Dual Channel. As far as I know one will not be able enable Dual channel with couple of RAM sticks at all. even it won’t work with two identical RAM of 512MB size. If everything is ok but still you are not able to work with Dual Channel mode then there could be an issue with Latency speed of RAM.

Apart from above I would like to put another point over here, mostly RAM slots of motherboard are colored with set of two different colors. I mean two slots are having same color whereas Rest of two are in different color. To get into Dual channel mode simply place two RAM sticks on the Slot which are having same color. However the thing which I stated above might vary motherboard to motherboard.

[Pamina]

In simple terms, I would like to explain that there is huge difference between Dual Channel and Quad Channel. Dual means 2 and Quad means 4. So Quad channel will handle more traffic as compared to Dual channel. Total width of a memory controller is 64 bit. So Dual channel would have bandwidth of 128bit where as Quad channel would have bandwith of 256bit. If you are thinking that more amount of RAM means larger size of bus, then you are completely wrong. In today’s market we are having motherboards are having 4 RAM slots that are having support for Quad Channel. We are not using RAM modules together rather , we are placing RAM modules on different channels and combining them. if two modules are placed on same channel, I don’t think so memory controller will be able to access data through it.

I am aware of couple of modes are available in which are Ganged mode and Unganged mode. Ganged mode all memory controllers are used as a single unit. it would access both the RAM slot as a single one. It does not have support for Read and write operation together. in fact operation can be handled at a time. The completely opposite things are taken place with unganged mode. that means read and write operation can be done at single moment of the time.